


Creatures of the Night

by MaplePaizley, thewhiskerydragon



Category: Natasha Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 - Malloy, Voyná i mir | War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
Genre: Blood, F/M, Gen, M/M, Vampire AU, Vampires, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-29
Updated: 2019-07-08
Packaged: 2020-02-09 15:36:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 22,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18641023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaplePaizley/pseuds/MaplePaizley, https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewhiskerydragon/pseuds/thewhiskerydragon
Summary: Natasha hunts the things that go bump in the night.





	1. Nightlife

**Author's Note:**

> She's finally here! The Vampire AU!!! We would LOVE to hear your thoughts and opinions!

Some girls handled an ugly breakup by going out with their friends, getting smashed, and finding a new boy, not necessarily in that order.

Natasha, personally, favored ice cream and soap operas.  

Andrei hadn’t answered her messages or picked up her calls. He hadn’t responded to her emails or IMs. Natasha had a strong suspicion, knowing what an emotionally-constipated jackass Andrei was, that he had either blocked her number or ignored her or both.

So, given the circumstances, she felt that she was entitled to a little goddamn self-indulgence, thank you very much.

Presently Natasha lay curled on her bed—her very unmade bed—in a fetal position, surrounded by a veritable avalanche of tear-sodden tissues and pillows and sentimental polaroids she had taken of her and Andrei over the past year. She hadn’t bothered to change out of her pajamas today. Hadn’t bothered changing out of them all week, as a matter of fact, no point to it when she hadn’t left her room to do more than trudge down the hallway to the bathroom or collect her orders from the pizza delivery guy. If she had a dollar for every time she had cried over the past seven days, she would have had enough money to buy a laptop that didn’t threaten to overheat every time she tried propping it next to her on the mattress to watch another episode of _Not Born Beautiful_.

It was a pitiful existence, but it was the one she had resigned herself to.

She sorted through the polaroids, pausing on a photo taken just days before Andrei had left on his trip. Natasha’s finger must have covered part of the lens; a flesh-colored blur obscured the lower right corner of the frame. Andrei’s eyes were underlined with dark circles. He smiled as Natasha kissed his cheek. They looked happy together. Perfect. How had it all gone wrong?

She should have torn up the photos out of spite. But every time she considered it, the tears came back with a vengeance—Andrei had bought her that camera as a birthday gift—and the more she tried to think of anything else the worse it all seemed.

From the door there came a timid knocking, then an equally-timid voice.

“Natasha? Can I come in?”

Natasha squeezed her eyes shut and hugged the pillow tighter. If she stayed quiet enough, maybe Sonya would leave.

The knocking grew more insistent. “Tasha,” called Sonya. “Please, just let me speak to you.”

“Go _away_ ,” said Natasha. To her own shame, her voice was hoarse from crying.

She saw a flash of Sonya’s dark red hair as the door creaked open. Natasha’s mood soured a little further.

“The door was locked,” she grumbled.

Sonya wrinkled her nose as she took in the wreckage of the room—grease-stained pizza boxes, empty Chinese cartons, half-eaten jars of Nutella, piles of scrunched-up snot-filled tissues, strewn-about pajamas and throw blankets. If a bomb had gone off in here it couldn’t have looked much worse.

“Oh, Tasha,” she sighed.

Natasha buried her face in her pillow, drawing the quilt over her head. She didn’t want Sonya here. She didn’t want her judgement. She wanted to be left alone to her misery and comfort food and the photos she was absolutely going to chuck in the bin. At some point.

Sonya pulled the covers back brusquely. Natasha gave a shriek of indignation and scrambled after them.

“You need to get out of bed,” said Sonya.

“No!” said Natasha.

As if with a vengeance, Sonya wrenched the sheets out of Natasha’s grip and tossed the quilt over the footboard. “You haven’t left your room all week,” he said. “You haven’t showered. I don’t remember the last time I saw you eating something _green_. And if you keep cutting class like this, you’re going to fail out of uni.”

“I don’t care,” Natasha snarled. “It doesn’t matter.”

Sonya crossed her arms. “I know that you’re too smart to fail out over a boy, Natalya. What if you lose your scholarship? What would your mother think?”

Natasha wailed even harder. “H-he was _awful_ , Sonya.”

“Oh, Tasha.”

Natasha fished her phone out of the wrinkled sheets with a wet sob. Even the screensaver hurt to look at. It was a photo from Christmas, her and Andrei outside in the snow. Andrei wore a beanie she had knitted him, a rare smile dancing on his lips. She traced his face, lingering on that smile, before she scrolled up and offered Sonya the offending messages.

She didn’t need to look to read along. By now, she had memorized them.

9:37

 **Drushya:** Hey Nat

 **Natasha:** Hey!!

 **Natasha:** arey ou coming home soon?

 **Natasha:** i miss you <3 <3 <3

 **Natasha:** (✿◠‿◠)

 **Drushya:** I think I’m going to stay for a few more days

 **Natasha:** how are you doing???

 **Drushya:** Busy

 **Drushya:** Stressed

 **Natasha** : :’( </3

 **Natasha** : poor thing

 **Natasha** : tell you what

 **Natasha** : when you get back

 **Natasha** : i’m taking you to that really nice restaurant we went to last christmas

 **Natasha** : and then we’ll go catch a movie

 **Natasha** : my treat ;)

10:11

 **Drushya:** We need to talk

 **Natasha:** drushya?

 **Natasha:** is something wrong?

 **Natasha:** do you want to call?

10:47

 **Natasha:** hey sweetheart ily to bits but i have an exam in the morning

 **Natasha:** i think im gonna crash

 **Natasha:** sweet dreams!

 **Natasha:** <3 <3 <3

11:30

 **Drushya:** I don’t think we should see each other anymore

 **Natasha:** wait

 **Natasha:** what

 **Natasha:** im sorry what

 **Drushya:** I’ve been thinking about it for a while

 **Drushya:** I can’t do this anymore

 **Drushya:** I’ll drop off your things when im back in moscow

 **Natasha:** what the fuck is this???

 **Natasha:** are you seriously breaking up with me over TEXT???

 **Natasha:** you fucking jACKASS

 **Natasha:** is this some sort of joke

 **Natasha:** this istn funny

 **Natasha:** andrei answer your phone

 **Natasha:** answer

 **Natasha:** your fucking

 **Natasha:** phone

 **Drushya** can no longer receive texts from **Natasha**

Sonya’s eyes widened as she scrolled. It took an embarrassingly long time to reach the end.

“Oh, Tasha,” she sighed.

“He broke up over _text_ ,” Natasha wailed. “Who the fuck does that?”

There followed a pause. With evident disgust that Natasha pointedly chose to ignore, Sonya swept aside a pile of tissues and cleared a patch of the mattress.

“Maybe,” she said, seating herself next to Natasha, “it was because he knew you’d react like this?”

“I have a right to be upset,” Natasha spat.

“Why do you keep rereading this?”

Natasha snatched her phone back. “What did I do wrong?”

Sonya made an exasperated sound. “This is just the way he is. You know that. You _knew_ that before you started dating.”

“It’s not fair.”

“Maybe it’s for the better,” she said. “I always thought you two were badly suited for each other. Don’t give me that look. You’ve been complaining to me about him every week for the past two semesters. You can’t be surprised this is the end result.”

Natasha’s face crumpled. Her bottom lip began to wobble dangerously. “I thought he loved me.”

“Well, it was only a year,” said Sonya, and Natasha could have hit her with the pillow but restrained herself by sheer force of will.

For someone whose dating history amounted to a grand sum of zero, she seemed to have an awful lot of confidence doling out unsolicited opinions on other people’s relationships.

“I’ll bet he went back to Lise, the dickhead,” Natasha said. “He never did get over her.”

“Lise is still in Germany, Tasha.”

“And he probably went to visit her while he was away!”

“You said he was in Prague, didn’t you?”

Natasha sniffled and Sonya let out a long sigh, rubbing Natasha’s back in slow, soothing circles.

“You can’t keep living in the past, Nat,” she said gently. “You’ll drive yourself crazy.”

“I-it’s not the past!” Natasha howled. “It’s right now, and it’s _awful._ ”

Sonya sighed again and leaned her head against Natasha’s shoulder. “I’m sorry,” she said. “If I could do anything to help, I would.”

Natasha perked up immediately. “Well, there is _something_ you could do.”

Sonya’s face went white. “Not that.”

“But Sonya—”

“No. We’ve been over this before.”

Natasha sank back against the pillows with a sullen huff. “What’s the point of having magic if it can’t help you?”

“I don’t _have_ it, I _use_ it. There’s a big difference.”

“If you loved me, you’d give me some.”

Natasha was one of the few people in this world capable of wearing Sonya’s patience to irritation. She was getting close now, by the look of things.

“It’s not meant for things like this,” said Sonya. “If you had listened to Marya for more than five minutes, you’d know that by now.”

“Just one measly little charm. Please. That’s all I need.”

“ _No_.”

“What sort of a witch are you?” Natasha grumbled.

“The sort that doesn’t mess around with forces I don’t completely understand.”

Natasha latched onto her sleeve in a way that was more deliberate than childish. “Please, Sonyushka, I _need_ it. Or I’ll never be happy again.”

At the diminutive, which Sonya hadn’t been called in any seriousness since about the age of six, she drew away. “Now you’re being ridiculous.”

“But Sonya—”

“No, Tasha. I mean it.”

“But—”

“If you ask me again, I’ll hex you so hard you’ll have acne till the New Year.”

Being dumped, now, that was torture enough. Being dumped and having acne would be unbearable. Natasha dissolved into tears again and buried her face in her pillow.

She heard Sonya whisper something that sounded a little too close to _give me strength_. The pillow was pulled away from her.

“Alright, alright” Sonya said. “If it’ll stop you crying.”

Natasha’s head shot up, but Sonya put out a hand to stop her.

“I won’t charm you. But I have something that might help.”

Natasha deflated, only slightly. It wasn’t what she had hoped for. But if this was as much as she could get, she would damn well take it.

Sonya fumbled around in her purse until she pulled out an ugly silver ring with a round, plastic-looking jewel in the center, like something from the seventies. Natasha couldn’t quite decide which color it was—it seemed to shift between purple, green, red, blue, and pink as she stared at it, without ever settling on one.

“It’s a mood ring,” Sonya said, answering the question before it was asked. “Literally. I borrowed it from Marya.”

Natasha’s eyes went wide.

“I’m only letting you borrow it for tonight. You can’t wear it for too long.”

“I don’t care,” Natasha said. She reached for it. Quicker, Sonya drew back, holding it away from her, like teasing a dog with a treat.

“I’m telling you this because it’s important you’re aware of what you’re getting into,” she said, like reciting something she had memorized. “It won’t change anything internal. There’s no magic in this world that can make you feel something real. The charm…it just messes with your perception.”

“But it’ll stop me feeling like shit?”

Sonya sighed. “It’ll make it so that you aren’t upset by any of this stuff.”

“That’s good enough for me,” Natasha said, and slid it onto her finger.

For a moment, nothing happened. Natasha frowned and twisted the ring. Perhaps this was it. The full extent of centuries of humans studying magic, and this was the best they could do.

Then her head began to clear, the sensation of a cup of coffee after one too many days without it, and the awful scrunchy feeling in her stomach she hadn’t even realized was there receded. Natasha twiddled the ring again. The stone became red. It gave no sign of changing color again.

Sonya eyed her warily. “How do you feel?”

“Good,” Natasha said. She smiled. “Better.”

“You aren’t still upset about Andrei?”

Natasha considered this. She did not need to consider it for long.

“ _Fuck_ Andrei.”

Sonya bit her lip. “That’s progress, I guess.”

Natasha sprang to her feet. She had been sitting for too long. There was so much energy inside of her. “I wanna go out tonight,” she announced. She flung the curtains open. Outside, the Moscow sky was dark and lit with the neon lights of the city below. Even better.

“What?” said Sonya.

“I wanna go party. It’s Halloween. We should be out doing something fun for once.”

Sonya shifted uneasily. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

Of course she wouldn’t, Natasha thought. The last time Sonya had been to a party was in middle school, and she had spent the better part of the night hiding in the bathroom to avoid the people and the loud music.

Well. There was no better person to set her right than Natasha.

“It’s a fucking great idea,” she said. She turned to the mirror to fix her hair. It was a bit greasier than she would have liked, having spent a little too much time between showers. Nothing some dry shampoo couldn’t fix. “We could both do with a night out.”

“Are you sure you’re okay to fight?”

Natasha made a shooing motion with her hand. “I won’t need to.”

From behind her she heard Sonya sigh. “But Nat…”

“It’s Halloween,” Natasha said stubbornly. “There are never any vamps out on Halloween.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Any leech with a brain is gonna spend the night with the windows bolted and the doors locked. I think we’ll be safe.”

Natasha moved to her desk and rifled through her things for her makeup bag. Foundation, powder, mascara, her favorite red lipstick she had borrowed from Marya and then neglected to return, a kohl pen that still had a bit of life left in it. University dorms only had shitty lighting—she’d have to do her eyeliner in the bathroom if she wanted straight wings. That was fine. She could make herself look hot in ten minutes if she really tried.

“Doesn’t hurt to be prepared,” Sonya said.

“Stakes are too bulky. It won’t look right with my dress.”

“ _Natasha_.”

Closet next. That cute white dress she had been meaning to wear since the semester began. Natasha tossed her stiletto heels over her shoulder and hoped they would land on the bed. “I’ll take holy water. Satisfied?”

“If you had half a brain,” Sonya said as she folded up a pizza box and made good effort to shove it into the trash can, “you would have holy water with you at all times.”

“As if leeches would bother _clubbing_ ,” Natasha scoffed.

Sonya seemed to want to object. She shouldn’t have. Vampires were few and far between these days, and the ones that had managed to stick around historically hadn’t made the best effort to keep up with the times. The Bolkonskys had eradicated most of the established clans in urban Russia over the course of a few hundred years. Moscow hadn’t seen any primordial vamps for ten or twenty years—depending on who you asked—all thanks to Andrei’s family.

But Natasha didn’t mention that. The jackass didn’t need the ego boost.

“Take it for my sake then,” Sonya said.

“Fine.”

Sonya crossed her arms. “A knife too.”

Natasha stuck her tongue out as she added tights and one of her nicer bras to the growing pile on her mattress. “Worrywart.”

“If you’re going to act like an idiot, I can always take the ring back.”

Natasha whirled around on the spot. “You wouldn’t!”

“Try me.”

Natasha held up her hands in surrender, turning to the closet. She kept her weapons hidden under a layer of yoga pants, where the RAs had yet to discover them. She reached for a silver knife, weighing it contemplatively in her hands. Her favorite. Nikki’s last gift to her.

“I’ll bring this,” she said. “But this is not a hunting mission. We’re going to be two normal girls going out for a normal night on the town.”

“Sure,” Sonya said drily. “We’ll just hope security doesn’t notice the knives.”

* * *

 

Khlemnoi Lev wasn’t the nicest establishment on a good day, but the drinks were cheap enough for broke college students and it was close enough to the apartment that the cab was neither entirely unjustified nor expensive, and the bouncers never bothered to check coats or bags too thoroughly, which suited Natasha just fine.

Sonya shivered in her borrowed dress and heels, looking as out-of-place as you could at a place like this. Natasha had harassed her into a pair of cat ears and eyeliner whiskers—a half-assed costume at best, but you couldn’t really expect Sonya to take the initiative herself. Natasha herself had scrounged around her closet, and when that turned up nothing, forced Sonya to stop at a drugstore on their way over for some fake blood and fangs.

It was half-assed too. But Andrei would have hated it, which as far as Natasha was concerned was only a point in its favor.

“They’ll have non-alcoholic options, right?” Sonya asked through chattering teeth, pulling her jacket tighter around her shoulders. “A coke? Water?”

“Has anyone ever told you that you’re boring?”

Sonya muttered something under her breath about _being practical_ and crossed her arms with an irritated huff.

This evening Khlemnoi Lev would be packed tonight, if the line was anything to go by. It seemed everyone in Moscow under the age of thirty had crammed themselves behind the barricade on this stretch of street. Their costumes ranged from mundane to outrageous. The only two people not dressed up were the two men ahead of them in line. The shorter of the two, and the older-looking, had a hard handsome mouth and dark eyes lined with kohl. He wore a beard the way Andrei used to, but his was longer and less neat. He was broader too, built like a footballer, and an absolute snack.

Natasha’s eyes shifted to his companion.

This one was so blonde it was ridiculous. Natasha had to look twice before she believed it, because no one looked that good, that stupidly hot in person. He wore a white V-neck and a leather jacket and tight leather pants, and it was _fantastic_. Natasha stared without meaning to. He was taller and slighter than his friend, the most tantalizing hint of how lean he was under that shirt, and Natasha really shouldn’t have been staring this long but then again, was there really any harm in it?

They couldn’t be real, she decided. Nothing about them seemed real. They looked like someone had taken a photograph and turned the saturation up. Like oil paintings rendered in flesh and bone.

Natasha nudged Sonya, wiggling her eyebrows, and nodded her head towards the two men. “Look, Sonyushka,” she whispered. “One for each.”

“Not my type,” Sonya reminded her.

Natasha’s grin widened another inch or so. “More for me.”

“You just broke up with Andrei,” she hissed.

“And I’m back on the market!”

“You’re ogling,” Sonya hissed through clenched teeth.

“So?”

“He’s not a piece of meat.”

“Listen,” said Natasha, “if I had an ass like that, I’d _want_ people to ogle.”

At that, the blond man let out a soft snicker. Natasha flushed hotly and closed her mouth. Had he overheard her? Had she been too forward? Had she offended him?

But he turned to face them with an easy smile as he leaned back against the wall, seemingly unaffected.

 _Shit_ , Natasha thought. His face was even nicer than his ass.

“Evening, ladies,” he said with a charmingly lopsided grin. “Happy Halloween.”

“No costume?” said Natasha.

He chuckled. “I prefer them on beautiful women.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” said his friend.

Sonya rolled her eyes. “We’re not interested. Thanks.”

“Not so fast, Sonya,” Natasha said, flashing the man a bright grin. “We could use the company.”

Blondie—Natasha decided she would call him that until she got a proper name—stuffed his hands into his pockets, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet, a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Are you gonna invite us to come in with you or what?”

She blushed as an unexpectedly bold thrill rushed through her. “If you buy me a drink.”

Blondie grinned. “I think that could be arranged.”

Sonya glared at her. “ _Tasha_.”

Natasha blindly swatted at her, keeping her smile fixed on Blondie. “I’d love that.”

“Of course you would,” the bearded man said.

Blondie clapped his friend on the back. “Don’t give us such a long face, Fyedka. I’ll buy you a drink too, if it makes you feel better.”

Fyedka’s face hardened. He shoved Blondie in the shoulder, hard. “Shut the hell up.”

“Ignore him,” Blondie said to Natasha. “He gets testy when he’s peckish.”

Natasha was inclined to take his word for it. Fyedka, up close, looked decidedly less approachable than from behind. That was fine. She already had the attention of one cute boy. It wasn’t as if Sonya would be interested in either of them anyway.

Something bumped against Natasha’s back from behind. She realized the line had moved ahead without her noticing. Perhaps she had been too distracted. It was easy to be distracted, when you had Blondie and co. to stare at.

Sonya grabbed her arm and pulled her aside. “Maybe this was a bad idea.”

Natasha ducked out of her grip. “Relax, would you? We’re having fun, everything’s fine.”

“Tasha—”

“Please, Sonyushka? I haven’t had fun like this in ages.”

Sonya closed her eyes and sighed. “Fine. Just don’t do anything stupid.”

“Please,” said Natasha, shouldering off her coat as they pushed their way into the club. Pounding music and the stink of liquor spilled out the front doors. “When have I ever?”

* * *

 

Natasha didn’t quite remember how she had ended up making out with Blondie off to the side of the dancefloor, only that she was enjoying it very much.

Some time ago, Sonya had run off to the bathroom, muttering something under her breath about washing the stupid makeup off, and Fyedka had disappeared in the general direction of the bar, which left the two of them alone. Blondie—somehow she still hadn’t gotten his name—had asked her to dance, and it had been less dancing and more preamble to this: holding him close and luxuriating in the feeling of his skin on hers.

Through the heat of the club, sweat, moving bodies, alcohol, she caught a whiff of something. Sandalwood, she thought. Maybe patchouli. Warm. Inviting. Natasha broke the kiss to take it in. Was it cologne, or his natural scent?

And the leather pants. God fucking damn. They hugged his hips and those long, lean legs. They were the sort of thing Andrei would never have worn, and she knew because God only knew she had tried to wrestle him into something like them enough times.

 _Bad Nat_ , she told herself. _No Andrei. Only hot stranger._

She pushed those troublesome thoughts aside and pressed up against Blondie, tangling her fingers in his belt loops. The man let out a low purr and snaked his arms around her hips, drawing her even closer.

“Eager, are we?” he laughed.

“Of course,” she said. “You’re so hot…”

“Anatole,” he said.

“What?”

“My name. It’s Anatole.”

“Oh. Natasha.”

“Natalie?” he said.

Natasha paused. He hadn’t heard her properly. Understandable, what with how loud the DJ had cranked the music. That was fine. Natalie worked. Natalie was cuter anyway. Andrei had never called her Natalie.

“Natalie,” she repeated with a nod.

“Beautiful,” Anatole said. “It suits you.”

Natasha blushed a deep scarlet. Anatole said something else, but she couldn’t quite make it out. That was fine too. They didn’t need to speak. Natasha didn’t care enough to listen to whatever it was he had to say.

Anatole purred in the back of his throat as she pulled him into another kiss and slipped a hand under his waistband.

Andrei would’ve been mortified. He would have turned bright red and stuttered and skirted out of the room, because Andrei felt guilty about every goddamn thing there was to feel guilty about, except perhaps blocking his ex-girlfriend’s number after dumping her over text. Anatole groaned and tangled his hand in her hair, tilting her head back.

The song changed; it became louder, with a pounding bassline that seemed to rattle the club to its foundation. Natasha felt it pounding in her chest. Perhaps she should’ve worn earplugs.

When they broke apart again, Anatole said something. It was lost in the din of the music.

“I can’t hear you!” she shouted back.

Anatole’s mouth opened in a surprised ‘o’. Smiling, he put his hands over her ears. Natasha realized why immediately—his palms muffled the music into background noise, but when he spoke, she heard his voice clear and low, like speaking in a small quiet room.

“I said,” he repeated, “how would you like to get out of here?”

Natasha paused to consider that.

It hadn’t entered into her head until now that she might go home with someone tonight. But now that it was on the table, it was an incredibly tempting offer. What did she have to lose? She was stronger than any human man. He couldn’t hurt her if he tried. The only thing there was to fear was embarrassing herself, really.

And God only knew she deserved some fun.

“I have a flat a few blocks away,” he offered.

She nodded and turned towards the exit, pulling him along by his belt loops, and together they shouldered their way through the chaos and din of the club to the curb, stumbling as they went. After the heat of the club, the night air was cold as shock. Natasha’s ears rang with the afterecho of the pounding music. She could still feel the bassline vibrating in her bones.

“How far did you say it was?” she said to Anatole.

“Maybe another six blocks.”

Natasha scowled as her impatience got the better of her. If this was to be a night of boldness, then there was no point in not going the whole hog.

Natasha took hold of the lapels of his jacket and tugged him down the side of the street. “I don’t want to wait,” she said. “Here. Now.”

Anatole laughed, as if this wasn’t his first time being dragged into an alley for an ill-advised hookup. The thought of that was thrilling. Perhaps it was stupid, but Natasha was tipsy and frankly too excited to really give a shit. She took him by the shoulders and pushed him, hard, against the wall, and pressed herself flush to him, her hands snaking down to fiddle with his zipper.

“Shouldn’t you at least buy me dinner first?” he said, laughter in his voice.

“Shut up,” Natasha said.

Anatole’s eyes went wide with delight. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Wouldn’t want anyone to see us, after all,” she murmured, gesturing towards the end of the alley. Out in broad daylight. Nightlight. Same thing. Thrilling, either way.

Anatole smirked. “We’d give them a show.”

Natasha laughed. Suddenly everything seemed funny. She kissed him again, pressing him against the brick wall, and when he moaned into her mouth, she swore it was the sweetest sound she had ever heard.

She paused, wondering how to go about this. Their current position against the wall was a matter of impracticality. She could have him lie down, but the street was dirty and wet, damp with the late October rain, and he might not have appreciated it if she asked. Natasha quickly pushed that thought aside.

“I think,” she said, breaking away again, almost laughing when he moved after her lips, “I think the logistics of this are a bit…um…questionable.”

“Hm,” he said, as though he hadn’t considered this. “You might be right.”

“Should we switch?”

No less in control, Natasha smiled as they swapped places. With some effort, she wrapped her legs around his hips. Her hands found the lapels of his jacket and pulled at it until it slid off of his shoulders onto the street. His arms wrapped around her, strong, despite how lean they looked. Natasha didn’t know where she wanted most to put her hands.

There had to be some catch, she thought. Everything about him was too good to be true.

“I have a stupid question,” she asked, between kisses, and curled her fingers in his hair. His hair. Christ. Natasha had never felt anything so soft before. “Is that your natural color?”

“I’d answer you, but I’m under orders to shut up.”

Natasha laughed. “I’ll give you permission to speak.”

“It’s natural, thank you very much.”

“You know, I’ve always had a thing for blondes.”

“Really?”

Natasha giggled. “No.”

Some small distant part of her knew that this wasn’t like her, but in the moment, she couldn’t bring herself to care. Perhaps he brought something wild out in her. Something Andrei hadn’t.

Anatole chuckled. “My lucky day, then.”

Natasha grinned and pulled him back towards her until their lips met again.

Anatole broke away from her and started to kiss along her jaw. Natasha let out a soft sigh and tangled her hand in his hair to guide him along. The other she slipped up his shirt. Anatole responded in kind, and his hands slid under her skirt, up her thighs. His skin was perfect, smooth and soft and cool. Her hand tightened his hair until it threatened pain, her nails against his scalp as she let out a pleased hum.

Suddenly Anatole shouted in pain and shoved her away. Natasha stumbled backwards and barely caught herself before she fell. When she looked back again, he was clutching his hand to his chest, his face drawn in pain, leaning back against the wall and almost sagging under his own weight. Unease worked its way up in her stomach. This wasn’t how it was meant to go. There was something wrong here.

“Anatole?” she began cautiously.

“What the hell is your damage?” he snarled.

Natasha remembered the silver knife strapped to her thigh and froze. Oh, God. She had forgotten about it until now. What must he have thought? Had he hurt himself? The blade was so sharp, one wrong touch, and God, what had she done?

“I can explain,” she began. “Anatole—please, I promise, it’s not what you—”

Manically, he scrubbed his palm on the thigh of his pants. Natasha smelled burnt ozone and flesh and something strangely metallic. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, ah, fucking _shit_!”

Natasha froze as realization sank in. Not a cut. A burn.

Her heart thundered in her ears.

“Oh my God,” she said. Her hand fumbled to her side for the stake that wasn’t there. “Oh my _God_.”

Anatole’s eyes gleamed a feral, electric blue and his lip curled into a snarl. His canines were larger than she remembered them. Gleaming white. “You’re a Hunter, aren’t you?” he said. “Nice choice of costume. Funny, actually.”

Natasha shrank back against the wall as he stepped towards her. “Stay the hell back,” she said.

Anatole examined his palm as he straightened up. The skin had risen an angry-looking red, shiny and inflamed, as though he’d pressed his hand to a hot iron and held it there. “Bolkonsky really has let things go to the dogs. I never thought the old man would start bringing in little girls to help.”

Nikolai’s knife. It wouldn’t kill him, but it might give her an opportunity to get away.

She reached for it, but his hand shot out, faster than any human’s could have, and caught her by the forearm. “Clever,” he said smoothly, a note of pain straining his voice. “Not clever enough.”

Natasha let out a choked-sounding whimper. Her shoes scuffled for purchase against the ground. She pulled back against his grip with all her might, but there was no give, nothing at all. Natasha had never felt so weak and helpless in her life. She had slain a dozen vampires over the past two years, and none had ever managed to get the better of her. Not like this.

She had known Hunters only led short lives. She hadn’t imagined hers would be quite this short.

 _Holy water_ , she thought, like a dart of ice through the fog. How had she forgotten it? She could reach her purse with her other arm and find it, still nestled in the lining. Her fingers fumbled for the cork as she kept her eyes locked on Anatole.

“I’ve never met a Hunter before,” he continued, like he had all the time in the world. “So I suppose we should make this special—”

Without thinking, Natasha wrenched open the cork and flung its contents in his face.

The effect was marvelous in its instantaneousness. Anatole screamed and stumbled backwards. His hands flew to his face. Natasha stared in horrified fascination as an awful burning smell filled the air, charred flesh, melting plastic, the sting of something metallic.

Natasha rose up to her full height, confidence and terror pumping in her veins. It would be easy now, now that she had the upper hand. This was more like her. This was Natasha the Hunter.

Anatole thought faster than she moved. Without further preamble, he bolted, out of the alley, around the curb, down the street, fast as he could go, ducking and weaving through the line and the crowd waiting outside Khlemnoi Lev.

Natasha gave chase. Not quickly enough.

She’d made it barely halfway down the block when her stiletto caught on the pavement and sent her tumbling to the ground, knife in hand. Anatole kept sprinting, faster and faster, until he disappeared from sight.

“Shit,” she hissed, breathing hard. “Shit, shit, _shit_!”

Natasha peeled herself off the ground, grimacing. When she looked down at herself, she wished she hadn’t. Her knees had been skinned through her tights. She wiped her bloodied palms on her dress, scraping out several bits of gravel as she did. Every part of her ached.

Further down the street, near the front door of the club, she heard Sonya’s distant worried voice.

“Have you—sir, I’m terribly sorry to bother you—have seen my cousin? She’s about this tall, black hair, she was wearing a white dress and a leather jack—no? Okay, thank you.”

“Sonya!” she cried.

Sonya’s head snapped towards her. They locked eyes. “Tasha?”

Sonya looked like she’d been dragged through every club in Moscow. Sweat had melted off her makeup. The cat ears were missing. Her hair tumbled around her shoulders, so tangled it was almost matted. The side of her dress was soaked—she’d been on the receiving end of someone’s drink. Her fingertips were burnt and blistered. She’d been casting spells.

Natasha was too breathless to speak for a minute as Sonya sprinted towards her and caught her in a tight hug.

“Where have you been?” she said. “I was worried sick, I came back and you were gone and I couldn’t find you and—” Her eyes widened as she took in the disaster that now was Natasha. “What _happened_ to you?”

“Blondie was a fucking vampire,” Natasha spat.

Sonya nodded. “They both were.”

“What?”

“The friend—Fyedka. He tried to bite the bartender.”

Natasha sucked in a sharp breath. “Is she alright?”

“She’s fine, just a little spooked. I cast a memory charm and put her in a cab home.” Her eyes darted to the club’s front door. “I don’t think anyone got wind of what happened.”

“What the hell were they doing _here_?”

“Somehow, I doubt they were here for the half-price shots,” Sonya said grimly.

“Well, they won’t be back now,” said Natasha, straightening her skirt.

Sonya’s face was pale and drawn. “We have to tell Andrei.”

A wild awful laugh pealed out of her. “Absolutely not.”

“Natasha,” Sonya began.

“I don’t care. We’re not involving that jackass in this. Not after what he did to me.”

“This isn’t _about_ you!”

“I will handle this,” Natasha hissed.

“What, like you handled that leech?”

Natasha hesitated and Sonya pressed on.

“People will get hurt the longer they stay here. _Innocent_ people, Nat. It’s your job to protect them.”

Natasha burned with the injustice of it. She would be damned, she would be _dead_ before she went crawling back to Andrei to ask for his help, before she ever spoke to him again. “And I will,” she said. “Without him.”

Sonya seemed not to have listened to her. “We should call him.”

“He blocked my number.”

“So _I’ll_ call him.”

“We don’t need his help,” said Natasha, with disappointingly little conviction.

“He knows all the clans that have historically been in this area. He has resources we don’t. He’s been doing this longer than both of us. If you won’t talk to him, then I’ll do it on my own.”

“ _Fine_ ,” she snapped. “We’ll go talk to the asshole.”

Sonya’s expression darkened. “Thank you _so_ much for putting your emotional relationship bullshit aside for five minutes so that we can save innocent people from being murdered. I can only imagine how difficult that must be for you.”

“Sonya,” Natasha began, and failed to finish her thought.

“Forget it. Let’s just go.”

Sonya pulled out her phone to call a cab. Natasha stood back and watched her as an awful cold sort of feeling rose in her stomach and gripped her. Every breath she took was an effort. Her skin crawled as if it no longer fit properly.

This wasn’t her, she realized. These weren’t her own thoughts or feelings. Natasha slipped off the mood ring. As she did, the world around her grew darker, the colors less saturated, and she felt a familiar heaviness settle in her chest.

It didn’t feel good. But it was the right thing to do.

“Here,” she said, offering the ring to Sonya. “I shouldn’t have pestered you for this.”

“No,” Sonya said. “You shouldn’t have.”

Natasha’s face crumpled. All the sadness of this morning came rushing back. She felt tears welling in her eyes. Crying again. Like a child. “I’m sorry,” she said. “You’ve been so good to me and I was awful. I should’ve listened to you.”

Without another word, Sonya pulled Natasha into her arms and tucked her into a tight hug. Natasha felt a sob lurch from her throat, and she pressed her face into Sonya’s hair and cried, there, right in front of the club, for everyone in line to see, and didn’t care. Sonya smelled of sweat and the stink of club and magic, like burnt ozone or metal, familiar, _her_.

“It’s alright,” Sonya murmured. “It doesn’t matter anymore. You’re alright, that’s the main thing.”

Natasha nodded and wiped her eyes. Her mascara left black streaks along her fingers. God only knew what her face must have looked like.

“Can we go?” she said in a small voice. The lump in her throat hurt almost too much to speak.

Sonya patted her back. “I think that’s a good idea.”

As they turned to leave, Natasha’s left heel, the one she had caught on the pavement, bent and snapped. Natasha pitched to the side with a shriek. Sonya caught her before she could fall. Natasha didn’t know who started laughing first. It didn’t matter. In seconds they were shrieking with laughter, clinging to each other, tearful and sweaty and exhausted, and the insanity of this night seemed a little further behind them and a little less awful.

“We’re disasters,” Natasha said, and wiped her running eyes again.

Sonya sighed. Happily this time, not wearily. “You’re not wrong.” She ran her fingers through Natasha’s hair to fix whatever Anatole had done to it. “Come on, you mess. Let’s go home.”

And so the two of them stumbled off down the street, arm in arm.


	2. That Horrible Woman

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Private and Intimate Life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HI FRIENDS
> 
> first and foremost we're so sorry for the delay! Finals and starting a 9-5 job happened and the last few weeks have been a v busy time
> 
> ALSO thank you SO much for the love this fic has gotten already! We appreciate it and you so much!
> 
> (anatole is a snake and this is canon)

The boys were late.

Hélène sighed as she sank down onto the chaise and let her hair fall back over the armrest. She could feel the blood starting to dry on her chin, tacky and cold. The taste of it lingered, thin and metallic, on her tongue. Then came that familiar bone-deep ache as her canines retracted into her gums. You never quite got used to it, she mused bitterly. Not even after all this time.

A little ways across the room on the ottoman by what remained of the coffee table, the thrall collapsed to the floor with a whimper, pressing his hand to the still-bleeding puncture marks along the side of his throat. Hélène clucked her tongue against the roof of her mouth and tossed him a roll of bandages.

“Clean yourself up,” she snapped.

The thrall flinched at her tone. His hands fumbled around the bandages, clumsy fingers and slow thoughts. He looked as though he had forgotten what bandages were altogether.

Hélène sighed, layering her voice with Influence, that soft and silken gentleness that bent her boys and prey alike to her will. “Patch up your neck, darling. And don’t scratch at it this time, or you’ll give yourself an infection.”

The thrall nodded hazily and lumbered back against the wall to unravel the bandages. A heavy-eyed smile spread across his face, dull and perfectly content. He almost looked as though he were sleepwalking. Hélène almost envied that sleepy stupor too much to hate how utterly gormless he was.

She propped herself up on one elbow and nested her chin in her palm. A primal sort of restlessness itched under her skin, the rush of after-feeding, instinct deep as the marrow of her bones. Would he even protest, she wondered idly, if she snapped his neck? Was there anything left in him at all, little as there had been to begin with? Was it really worth it, keeping the half-cadaver around any longer?

Hélène bit her tongue and pressed her mouth shut—her fangs were sliding out again. There again was the smell of blood, unsatisfying as it was. If he didn’t hurry it up and bandage himself, she may very well have thrown sensibility to the wind and lunged to kill.

A flash of red underfoot caught her eye. Hélène looked down to the floor, not all that far from her resting place on the chaise.

“Oh, damn it all,” she hissed.

Blood. Blood on her favorite Persian carpet. The lovely indigo one with woven lions and elephants and arabesque flowers. Barely a century she had had it and it was already ruined, and the merchant she had bought it from had been executed by the Cheka, or the Red Army, or maybe it was the Whites, or Hélène-couldn’t-remember-what, and there was no damn way she could be getting her hands on another one in—

Hélène paused in her thoughts for a moment. What year was it? 2015? 2020? Even later? It hadn’t really been an entire century since Fedya, had it?

It didn’t matter. She would have to have the thrall run to the drugstore again to fetch her hydrogen perox-something or whatever the hell it was called and hope it was enough to clean up the stain. Even after four hundred years of practice, feeding without creating a mess was an art she still had yet to master. A thousand ruined dresses spoke to that.

And now the carpet.

Hélène let her head fall back against the armrest as she wiped her mouth on the sleeve of her robe. Feeding used to make her _feel_ something. Then, before the cities were lit with neon, she had craved the thrill of the chase. Human men in any era were easy to the point of cruelty—a well-placed touch, a coy smile, a bat of the eyelashes, and they trailed after her, little imagining what would become of them. There was something thrilling in the hunt, part seduction and part game.

This, somehow, had had the opposite effect.

Her thoughts spiraled downwards, bitter and wanting. She glanced briefly at the clock. Quarter past one. They were meant to have been back almost an hour ago. She had _told_ them to be back. Sunrise wasn’t for another six hours. If they were avoiding her, they still had time to kill before they were forced to turn back.

It wasn’t fair. When the boys weren’t home to entertain her, there was less than nothing to do. Existence had become a chore. Boredom gnawed at her guts like a rat. When you had been around for the better part of half a millennium, as she had once heard Fedya whispering to Anatole, it was no fucking wonder if you went a bit stir-crazy.

Hélène drew her arms around herself and held a throw pillow to her chest, running her fingers through the silken fabric for any bit of warmth she could find. She sank further along the armrest, until her back lay flat against the cushions, and stared at a spot on the ceiling where the plaster had begun to crumble away. It wasn’t right, letting someone like her wallow in solitude. She should have had a handsome lithe body in her arms, soft hair pressed against her cheek. Satin sheets, warm hands skating over her skin, the taste of caviar on her—

Hélène’s mood darkened a little further.

Food. That was the one thing she missed. She hadn’t tasted caviar in four hundred years. She hadn’t tasted anything. Hell knew she had tried—chocolate, oranges, vodka, cyanide. Nothing. It was weak of her to long for something so irrevocably human. But she had forgotten how it felt.

Just one of many things Vasily had taken from her.

Hélène rolled over onto the side to look at the thrall, still working away diligently at the gauze pads on his throat without the aid of a mirror. His glasses had slid to the tip of his nose. With his beard and dark curls, he should have looked more like Fedya than he did. Hélène saw the pallor of hemorrhage whitening his face. For a man of his size, she had expected a bit more stamina out of him. Pity.

His heart was weak. He’d be dead in a few weeks at most.

She really should have gotten rid of the pathetic creature, but hunting was tiresome these days, in the state she was in now, and whatever Anatole brought back for her wouldn’t be enough to last long.

“I’ve always hated Russia, you know,” she said to the thrall.

He blinked slowly. So little happening behind those eyes. She could just as easily have been speaking to the clock.

“I was born here,” she said. “Well, born and reborn, I suppose.”

The thrall furrowed his heavy brow, deep in concentration. His mouth slid open. Words seemed to evade him for a minute.

“Me too,” he said finally, with all the effort of a child still learning to speak.

Hélène huffed and turned back to the ceiling. Talking to thralls. To _humans_. This was what she had been reduced to.

Whatever Vasily had done, it had ruined her beyond insult. Damn him to hell and back.

Like a deep-seated itch that constantly rattled around the back of her head, the affliction muddied her thoughts and dulled her instincts. It had sapped the energy from her, drained the color from her face, leaving her a pathetic, weak shell of her former self.

Hélène clawed the pillow tighter as her rage stewed hotter. She hadn’t always been like this. Four hundred and some years ago, she had been the terror of the Tsardom of Muscovy. The Empire and the Soviet Union had risen and fallen and she had never aged a day. She had seen wars and tyrants and revolutions, sieges and protests and political movements, all deeply, terribly unimportant.

It seemed damnably unfair that it had come to this.

A bit of the wallpaper over the backrest of the chaise had peeled away and drooped over on itself. Hélène frowned and wiped at it with her thumb to stick it back to the wall. This apartment was falling to pieces.  Again, she glanced at the clock. One-thirty in the morning. Perhaps they really were avoiding her. Perhaps she had given them reason to. The other night, she had woken up to the salon blackout curtains wide open, in the full view of what would have been the incoming sunrise. Hélène had screamed at them until Anatole had dissolved into tears and Fedya had locked himself in his room for the rest of the night and taken to the walls for shooting practice, the way he always did when he was angry.

That it had been the thrall, in the end, who had mistakenly opened the curtains was beside the point. What mattered now was that the boys were pissing her off again, and the clock had almost ticked its way to one-thirty-five, and there was still no sign of their reappearance.

The nerve of it. They’d pay for this disrespect when they finally did come home. She’d make them sorry they had left her this long. Maybe she wouldn’t even wait till they arrived. Maybe she would go out herself and find them and drag them back here, protests be damned.

Before she could continue that line of thought any further, the front door announced its opening with an ungodly rattle. Hélène sat upright sharply and tossed the pillow aside, her anger forgotten.

“Tolya?” she called. “Fedya?”

From the front hall she heard the boys yelling at each other. There came a great crash that rattled the walls and sent dust and plaster raining down from the ceiling, and their voices rose higher and hoarser. Hélène furrowed her brow. She recognized all too well the sound furniture made when it was thrown across a room hard enough to smash the drywall. It was only a question of who had gotten mad enough to throw it this time.

Fedya burst into the hallway just as she did. His hair was damp—perhaps they’d gotten caught in the rain, which might have explained why he seemed in a foul mood, as he had been invariably since the middle of the twentieth century. Hélène didn’t care. He was here, and she wouldn’t have to languish in her own boredom for the rest of the night.

“Fyedka, darling,” she began.

Fedya ignored her and threw his coat onto the floor. Hélène caught him by the wrist as he stepped past her. Fedya halted in his tracks. His face darkened. In the dim light of the corridor, his eyes gleamed like green lamps.

“What do you want?” he snapped.

“You didn’t greet me,” she said.

Fedya’s jaw clenched. Hélène could see him fighting internally whether to fight or give in. Finally, he pressed a begrudging kiss to her cheek. He made a move to leave again, but Hélène wasn’t done yet.

“I don’t get a ‘hello’?” she said.

“Hello,” he said curtly. “Now, if you don’t mind—”

“Where were you tonight?”

“Hunting.”

Questionable. The pallor of his skin was almost translucent. If she wasn’t mistaken, there were a few new streaks of silver in his beard. He looked half-dead. Still. Hélène knew hunger when she saw it.

“You didn’t feed,” she said, narrowing her eyes. “Why?”

Fedya shrugged. “Got interrupted,” he muttered.

“Interrupted by what?” Her face hardened. “You stink of magic. If you were cavorting with those hell-forsaken witches again—”

Fedya raised an eyebrow and smirked. “Jealous, Lena?”

Hélène squeezed his wrist harder until he hissed in pain. “Where is Anatole?”

Fedya made an exasperated sort of gesture, as if to say _who’s to say?_ and slipped out of her grasp. Hélène didn’t bother catching him this time.

She pressed on to the living room, where one of the upholstered chairs—the last good one, dammit—had been smashed against the wall with enough force, apparently, to dent the plasterboard. The floor was littered with pieces of splintered wood and cushion springs. Wet bootprints tracked a meandering path over the carpet and the upholstery of the sofa, puddle-water and street-muck and hell-knew-what. Hélène caught the stink of alcohol and cigarette smoke and human sweat and almost gagged. She knew that smell. Khlemnoi Lev, that awful downtown club where the witches and werewolves and other creatures of the night seemed to congregate. An easy place to grab a human or two. Even easier to get yourself hexed.

More irritatingly, and more importantly, Anatole was nowhere in sight. Perhaps he had taken to hiding in the cabinet, or behind the blackout curtains.

“Tolya?” she called.

No response.

Hélène frowned. Normally when he was upset and looking for attention, he went to sulk in the salon until he got her attention. For a man as predictable as Anatole was, something must have been very wrong to make him deviate from habit.

She turned back where she had come from. It wasn’t a big enough apartment for him to hide for long. This hallway bent sharply to the right, under a chandelier that had all but come unscrewed. Anatole’s door was the first after the blood-splatter stain on the wallpaper. His room was a travesty of interior design, a million bits and pieces cobbled together from a dozen or so decades—for a man of the nineteenth-century he seemed to oddly pride himself on what he called ‘modern sensibilities’. A curtained four-poster bed, a leather recliner and a velvet chaise lounge. The walls were plastered with posters—David Bowie, or something just as gauche—taped up next to yellowing framed sheet music and French perfume advertisements from the twenties and whatever the hell else he had gotten his hands on since then. His violin was on the dresser next to a tin of pomade and a pair of opera glasses.

It would have been easy, with all the clutter and commotion, not to have noticed Anatole himself at all. He had thrown himself backwards onto the bed, his shoes kicked off, his legs splayed over the footboard. He held a pillow to his face and cried into it, pitiable sobs that she could hear from the door.

“Tolya?” she said gently.

Anatole reached over to the bedpost and drew the curtains with an indignant yank.

“Go _away_!” he said.

“I know you don’t really mean that.”

It was inviting bad luck to enter another vampire’s personal dwelling without express permission. But Hélène had never been one for tradition or privacy or leaving Anatole to sort his problems out on his own.

She swept aside the curtain and sank onto the mattress beside him, ignoring his indignant whimper. She let her hand run through his hair. He needed her, she mused smugly. No matter what he said, he always needed her.

“I’ve missed you tonight,” she said. “I expected you to come greet me.”

Anatole gave a wordless whine and held the pillow tighter. Hélène sighed. These little dramatic fits of his were tiresome, but she suffered through them regardless.

“You’re very cruel to keep me waiting,” she continued. “I was bored silly.”

Anatole peeked over the side of the pillow, then buried his face in it again.

Hélène pursed her lips. It was difficult to upset Anatole, if only for the simple fact that he rarely had the wherewithal to take offence to anything. Perhaps Fedya had insulted his outfit. She had warned him the leather pants looked stupid. Not that Anatole would have listened to her on a good day.

“What are you hiding from me?” she said.

“Nothing,” he said petulantly.

“I know you’re hiding something. Are you hurt?”

“It’s not any of your business.”

Hélène gently took his wrists and tugged at them without any real force. “Let me look.”

“I shall do no such thing.”

“I can’t help you if you won’t let me see.”

“You wouldn’t love me if you could see it. I’m hideous.”

“How would you know?” she said.

“Fedya told me.”

“You’re a fool for listening to him. Let me—”

She made a move to pry his arm away. Anatole tensed and held it firmly in place.

Barely seventy years ago, she was stronger than he could ever dream of being. But the effort it would’ve taken now would’ve been more pain than the point was worth.

Vasily’s fault. All his fault, the conniving bastard. He would pay for this eventually.

“Toto,” she said, slow and sweet and a tad warning. “My darling boy. I told you I wanted to look.”

Slowly, with evident reluctance, Anatole lowered his arm.

Hélène recoiled on instinct. She wished she hadn’t asked to look at all. Exposed now, the left side of his face, glowed an angry pink, blistered and raw, as if someone had taken a hot iron to his skin. It burned across his jaw, down his neck, disappearing into the collar of his shirt.

Anatole shrank back under her eyes and toyed with his collar, pulling it up to cover the burns on his throat.

“I told you,” he sniffled. “It’s awful.”

Hélène took his chin in her fingers, swallowing down her own disgust, and turned his face back to her. Hideous.

“How did this happen?” she said.

“It wasn’t my fault.”

“Tell me.”

“Someone threw holy water on me.”

Hélène made her voice flat and cold. “Who, Anatole?”

Anatole’s eyes darted to the side. “A Hunter,” he said quietly.

Hélène’s eyes went wide. “There aren’t Hunters in Moscow anymore,” she said. “No one’s seen Nikolai Bolkonsky in years.”

“It wasn’t Bolkonsky,” he said. “It was a girl. A _young_ girl.”

Hélène’s lip curled into a sneer. “You let a young girl get the better of you?”

Anatole’s eyes widened. He had the look of someone who had let slip something he shouldn’t have.

“It wasn’t like that, Lena,” he said. His voice began to waver nervously, the way it usually did before he dissolved into a long-winded blubbering rant. “She was terrifying. I thought I might die. I barely made it out with my life. She cornered me in an alley. I—I couldn’t escape. She had more crucifixes than I could count. She cornered me and grabbed me by the arm.” He took her hand and curled it around his wrist. “Like this. I tried to run, but she attacked me before I could get away.”

Hélène felt her unbeating heart grow heavy. She could have kicked herself. Bolkonsky was meant to have retired—of course he’d brought in new recruits. In her youth, Hunters had decimated scores of vampires without mercy or care. In the modern era, their numbers had dwindled as cities grew and spread them out, isolating from them each other.

Not enough, evidently.

“It’s not my fault,” Anatole continued piteously. “How was I supposed to know this would happen? I’ve never even _seen_ a Hunter before. Why would I think she’d be there?”

Hélène’s anger turned inwards. The vile little bitch, she thought. Marking up his face as if it belonged to her. Hélène had once staked another vampire through the heart for trying to hurt him, for trying to _steal_ him. She would tear the impetuous girl to shreds, limb from limb, and make her plead for the mercy of death.

“You’re not angry with me, are you?” said Anatole.

“I am angry.”

“But not with me?”

Debatable. But Hélène wasn’t in the business of apologies or charity. The burns were a temporary annoyance, nothing more. She would have to live with it.

“It’ll heal,” she said finally.

“When?”

“Eventually.”

Anatole let out a shuddering breath and slunk back down to the mattress to curl his hands in the quilt and slung one arm over his face to cover the burns.

She touched his cheek pensively. “But we can’t have a repeat of this little incident, can we?”

“No,” he said, more to the pillow than to her.

“I want you here with me. No more going out to dodgy witch-infested clubs, do you understand?”

Anatole twisted to look at her plaintively. “But _Lena_ —”

Hélène made her voice cold and hard. “You aren’t arguing with me, are you, Anatole?”

Anatole looked frightened, but only for a moment. The stupid thing he was, he didn’t have the sense to be properly afraid of her, even after two hundred-and-something years.

“No, Lena,” he said. “No, I’m sorry, please don’t be angry.”

His head turned to the side, his cheek to her knee, until the burns were hidden away from her sight. Hélène sighed and ran her fingers along his hairline. He looked terribly pathetic and sweet like this, she mused. Her Toto. Always hers, no matter what.

“Did you manage to eat anything tonight?” she asked.

Anatole shook his head.

Hélène sighed. It was difficult to stay angry with him at the best of times. And loathe as she was to share her limited supply, the circumstances presented her with few options.

He wouldn’t like it. But he didn’t have to.

“Pierre!” she shouted.

There came a scuffling of feet and creaking floorboards. The thrall appeared in the doorway, pale and shaking. He had done a shoddy job bandaging himself. That didn’t matter. Two feedings in a day might hurt, but it wouldn’t kill.

Anatole wrinkled his nose. “He’s _anemic_ , Lena.”

Hélène lightly whacked him upside the head and snapped, “Ungrateful.”

“Perhaps I’ll just starve to death.”

Hélène ignored him and turned back towards the thrall. “Poor Toto had a bit of an unfortunate accident tonight,” she said to him. “You’ll help him, won’t you, Pierre? For me?”

The thrall nodded dumbly.

“Oh, _thank_ you, darling,” she said.

Anatole lifted his arm away with a long-suffering sigh. When they had first met, his eyes had been wide and innocent, blue as the sky. Now they were almost violet. Vampirism had taken his beauty and refined it into something colder and more captivating, saturated, brimming with too much life for it to be passably real.

He was too weak to sit properly. That, or he wanted her to fawn over him. Hélène heaved him upright by the shoulders and propped him against the headrest.

The thrall startled at the sight of Anatole’s burnt face and flinched back, knocking into a stack of vinyl records by the bureau.

“Watch it!” Anatole snapped. “Those are vintage!”

The thrall blinked slowly as he reoriented himself and raised a large trembling hand to his neck, where the bandage had begun to seep red. Hélène tutted. Poor clotting. His platelet count must have been abysmal. Little wonder his blood had been so thin the last few days.

Anatole followed her gaze. He wrinkled his nose in distaste. “He’s not long for this world,” he said. “For hell’s sake, Lena, how much did you take?”

Hélène let her fangs slide out. “As much as I damn wanted,” she snapped. “He’s mine.”

“Where…where am I?” the thrall said.

“Dammit,” Hélène muttered.

“Have you broken him?” said Anatole.

“He’s starting to fade,” she said. “Influence isn’t working as well.”

Anatole’s eyes flicked between her and Pierre. “Lena,” he began in a wheedling voice, “can I finish him off?”

“No.”

“But he’s only got a few days left in him anyways,” he whined. “And I’m hungry.”

“And whose fault is that?”

“The little Hunter bitch’s,” he said.

Hélène tipped up his chin. “I’ll kill her,” she said solemnly. “I’ll give you her head on a plate.”

Anatole looked up at her through his eyelashes. “Promise?”

“Anything for you, darling. I’ll show them what happens when one of Bolkonsky’s henchmen tries to—”

The thrall’s head shot up, a sudden strange clearness in his eyes. “Andrei?” he said. He looked around him, frowning, stumbling over his feet, muttering under his breath as though he had misplaced something important. “Andrei? What’s…?”

“It might be kinder to put him out of his misery,” Anatole said, eyeing the thrall with distaste. “Seeing as you’ve cooked his brain to mush.”

Hélène gripped him by the back of the neck and forced him to look forwards. “If you kill him, I shall be very cross with you.”

Anatole jerked away suddenly to look back at her. “Fedya didn’t eat either tonight.”

“Why are you worrying about him?” she scoffed, stroking the hair back from his forehead. “Honestly, Tolya, sometimes you’d think you were still a human.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We <3 us some kudos/ comments! We'd love if you left one!


	3. The Family Business

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Mary really wishes Andrei had a different hobby.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi friends! Sorry for the delay! I (MaplePaizley) have a v demanding job which had me work nutty hours last week! TO TOP IT OFF, thewhiskerydragon is on her SEMESTER ABROAD rn which, while very exciting, has put a rather unfortunate six hour time gap between us (it's actually 3 am her time and she is up posting this because she is a trooper and a real one). 
> 
> In the meantime, we posted the final chapter of our magnum opus 'Of Dust and Dæmons' recently! If you haven't had a chance to look at it, please give it a read, because we're incredibly proud of our thiccest baby. 
> 
> Thank you so much for your patience! Your readership means the world to us!!!

The Bolkonsky house wasn’t the sort of place you could make into a home. God only knew a dozen generations of Hunters had tried. When the family business was dealing with creatures of the night, there were certain precautions you had to take. The infrastructure of the house was reinforced with iron. Every doorknob was plated with silver, every wall hung with crucifixes and icons, every window and threshold lined with salt.

But in the three hundred or so years that the Bolkonsky family had held residence at this address, they had neglected to take into account the more human aspects of life. Plumbing and heating, in Mary’s opinion, were what separated Hunters from the demons they hunted. The Bolkonsky house suffered for lack of it. With a boiler older than the current government, it was winter indoors in any season, not to mention the frankly appalling water pressure.

Some small logical part of Mary knew that the rational human thing to do was to call a plumber or an electrician, but the sheer number of occult artifacts that would be difficult to explain were a factor to take under consideration. She doubted normal humans kept longswords and sharpened stakes around the home. And so far, if cold showers and the occasional leaking hole in the roof were the worst of it, well, she would consider herself fortunate and continue on as normal, setting her alarm for seven o’clock in the morning and saying her prayers every night before she went to bed. There were more important things to worry about anyhow.

Namely, her brother. But that was a matter not worth getting into at an hour like this.

Mary yawned into the crook of her elbow as she trundled down the stairs. Her father had woken up early this morning. He would expect tea and toast in bed soon, which she would have to make for him, then hope he cooperated enough to eat. For the past few days he had been restive and snappish. Mary wondered if, in one of those fleeting moments of lucidity that came over him every so often between the fits and sleeping spells, he had realized that Andrei was gone.

Not that he was together enough to know the difference. Not that Andrei was home enough for there to be a difference.

With another yawn, one that she didn’t bother to muffle now that she was well out of earshot of the stairwell, Mary bumped open the kitchen door with her hip and set about making herself a cup of tea. Cold as the house was most days, the temperature now bordered more on _meat freezer_ . Mary drew the sash of her dressing gown tight and pottered back to the living room to fetch a pair of slippers. She snatched a battered copy of _Great Expectations_ off the coffee table, popped two slices of white bread into the toaster, and just before the kettle went off, poured it out into her favorite mug.

She wasn’t one much for black tea, but she couldn’t be bothered to hunt down the milk and sugar right now. The caffeine was what mattered. And as the scent of it wafted up, the headache building between her temples from too early a morning and too little sleep began to recede.

Mary had just leaned back against the counter to take her first sip when, through the doorway and from the living room, a light was switched on and a shadowed figure stood up.

Mary shrieked and let go of the mug as her hands went to the cross around her neck. Tea and bits of broken ceramic scattered all over the floor with an awful crash. She looked down at her feet, gingerly stepped away from the growing tea-puddle, then looked back across the room at the figure.

Andrei. Thinner than she remembered, ragged, still dressed in his burn-stained rain jacket and an old pair of jeans. A smudge of darkness under his right eye could’ve been a bruise, or a shadow from the dim lighting. His hair had gone a day too many without a wash or a comb. But it was him. Undeniably him.

“Drushya?” Mary gasped.

With more effort than it should have taken, Andrei raised his hand and dangled the house keys from his fingers. “I let myself in,” he said sheepishly. “I didn’t know if you’d be home.”

Already halfway to tears, Mary stepped over the tea puddle, launched herself at him, and threw her arms around his neck. “I was so worried about you, Drushya, and you never answered my texts—”

Andrei hissed sharply as she hugged him tighter. Mary felt as though ice cold water had been spilled down her front. She took him by the elbows to hold him steady and guided him towards the couch.

“You’re hurt,” she said.

“Not badly.”

“Where?”

“What?”

“Where does it hurt?”

“It’s nothing, Masha, really—”

“You’re not breathing right.” She frowned, then took another look. Breathing was only half of it. It was all the more visible now, now that she could see him properly, the awkward slant of his posture, the evident favorance of his right side over his left. Mary had seen it enough times before to know.

“Have you bruised a rib?” she asked. “Is that where it hurts?”

“I had a little spill, that’s—”

“Will you let me have a look?”

“Masha—”

“Please?”

Andrei grimaced as she lifted the hem of his shirt. Purple-green bruises bloomed along his chest. There was a deep cut across his side, up from the jut of his hip, stretching almost all the way up to his shoulder. Mary noticed, with a wince, that the skin had gone pink and warm with the forewarnings of infection.

She dashed to the bathroom to fetch the first aid kit, a raggedy used-up thing by now—she should’ve restocked it when she went for the groceries last, _dammit_ —and hurried back to the sofa, where Andrei had stretched out and kicked his feet up on the armrest. He had dumped his backpack out on the coffee table to sort through his things, the coffee table Mary had wiped down just the other day, covering it in dust and rusty flecks of dried blood.

Not back ten minutes and he had already made himself perfectly at home.

“Onto your side,” she said sternly, prodding at his ribs until he hissed again. “I want to get this sorted first.”

“It’s fine,” he grumbled, turning over. “It’ll fix itself eventually.”

“You should go to the hospital,” she said. “See a proper doctor. I don’t want this to get infected.”

“No hospitals,” he said. “They’ll ask too many questions.”

Mary plied a shard of broken glass out of his sleeve. Broken glass. Lord in heaven. “How did it happen?”

“I had to jump out—ah, _shit_ —out a window.”

Mary closed her eyes and let out a slow, frustrated breath. “That was foolish of you,” she said coolly.

“If there was a door,” said Andrei, with evidently thinning patience, “I would’ve used it.”

She placed the glass aside and made a mental note of its location. Silence lapsed between them as she sorted through the first aid kit.

“So,” she said, “was it the usual business?”

Andrei made a soft dry sound that wasn’t quite derisive enough to be a laugh. “A bit rougher than usual.”

Mary hesitated. “Any bites?”

“I’d tell you if there were.”

“I hope this was worth it,” she murmured. “I can’t keep fixing these.”

“It was. I got one of them,” he said.

Mary’s hands stopped moving. “You mean—?”

“I found the Petersburg clan.”

She sucked in a deep breath. “In Prague?”

A note of pride crept into his voice. “A little ways from there, yes.”

“And you—you got—are they all—?”

“No,” he said quietly. “I got the first boy. But I have the primordial leech on the run now. Eldest one. I’ve tracked him back here.”

“ _Here_?” said Mary. “You’ve brought him back to Moscow?”

Andrei turned to stare at the ceiling. “The rest of the clan must be nearby. With any luck, he’ll lead me right to them.”

Mary nodded, more numb than anything, as she pulled out a rolled up round of bandages. “You’re…are you not at all concerned—now that they’re all back in Moscow, I mean—?”

“No,” he said, still not looking at her. “I’ll handle it.”

Mary bit her lip. Of all the hobbies in the world, it was certainly among the more macabre Andrei could have picked up. She wondered sometimes why he couldn’t have been obsessed with video games or knitting instead. But it was too deeply ingrained in him, too much a part of who he was, or whatever it was their father had made him into.

“Dad’s doing well,” she said, dipping a towel in antiseptic. “He’s resting now.”

“Oh. That’s good.”

“He’s been asking after you.”

Andrei grimaced. “Was he.”

“You should go say hello.”

He gave her a tight smile. “Maybe later.”

It was always _maybe laters_ , and it always would be, and that was the truth of the matter. Mary knew for a fact he had not gone to sit with their father once without her having to drag him along with her. Those visits were all painful, long awkward stretches of silence, half-hearted attempts at conversation, until Nikolai went off on one of his nonsensical rants, scolding Mary for a cup of tea left to cool too long, or Andrei for parting of his hair on whatever side he decided was wrong, or their mother—dead fifteen years this December—for not cleaning that house properly. Andrei would silently seethe, never daring to raise his voice to their father, or walk out of the room when it became too much.

Mary sighed heavily and wiped at a cut on his forehead with the antiseptic. The room smelled of stale tea and dust and alcohol. “Are you hungry at all?”

“No.”

Not quite the question she had meant to ask. There was a sort of art to it, getting answers out of Andrei, one she still had yet to master after twenty-two years.

“When’s the last time you ate a proper meal?” she asked instead.

Andrei shrugged, as though she had just asked him his opinion on croquet, or the color grey. “Day or two ago.”

Mary squeezed her eyes shut. “ _Andrei_.”

Andrei sat upright sharply. “You’re not my mother, Marya,” he snapped. “I’m a grown man. I don’t need you fussing over me.”

Mary sighed again and leaned back and held her tongue. He was tired and stressed, she reminded herself. That was all. It wasn’t worth arguing with him over. There were many hills she was willing to die on. This was not one of them.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to. Can I get you anything? Maybe some tea?”

Andrei’s face softened at the attempted olive branch. “Tea would be nice.”

“Alright,” she said. “Just try to relax and I’ll bring it to you.”

Andrei hissed as he shifted back against the armrest. Mary clucked her tongue against the roof of her mouth and turned towards the kitchen cupboard.

On instinct, she reached for his favorite mug, the one with the chipped handle and the tea stain rings and cheesy design splashed across the front. _World’s Best Mom_ . Over the years, too many hands holding it had rubbed out the letters until it looked more like _Wcrld’s Best Mon_.

Mary hummed to herself to fill the silence as she put on the kettle and rummaged through the cabinet for the bottle. She hesitated as she unscrewed the lid. A good three-quarters empty now, with the label peeled off for reasons she didn’t care to delve into, this particular jar had served them far more good than Nikolai’s prescription had probably intended. Mary tipped the jar downwards, over her open palm, until two pills spilled out. Inwardly, she grimaced.

On several counts, both legal and spiritual, this was arguably reprehensible. The sort of thing their mother would have been appalled at. There was no getting around that. It was bad enough Andrei refused to go the doctor like a normal person, and really, what was she expected to do when he came home looking as if he’d gone and lost a round with the meat grinder?

God would understand, she told herself. He wouldn’t want Andrei, one of His agents, to suffer needlessly. Then again, he wouldn’t have suffered needlessly if he didn’t do things like jump out of windows.

Mary sprinkled the powder into his tea and stirred it in until the fine particles had disappeared. What Andrei didn’t know wouldn’t kill him. He needed the push sometimes to take care of himself. God only knew how he would manage without her.

She still remembered that harrowing night some three or four years ago when he had stumbled across the doorway, hand clasped to his throat after a leech had caught him with her teeth. A small bite. Inconsequential, if you looked at it a certain way. At least, Andrei had insisted so. But the blood had refused to coagulate. Vampire venom. Two hours later, when his skin had gone an awful chalky white he collapsed and was unable to stand again.

Mary would never forget that drive to the hospital, Andrei whimpering in the passenger seat beside her as he slipped in and out of consciousness. She supposed it was fortunate, in retrospect, that he had been too out of it to complain that she had taken him to a human doctor. It was even more fortunate the hospital staff had concluded for themselves that it was a dog bite.

Mary handed Andrei his tea and sat down on the sofa next to him. Andrei took a tentative sip. A tiny smile curled the corner of his mouth. He probably didn’t even realize he was smiling. That was Andrei, she thought. Cold as sin and twice as determined. But she treasured the rare moments like this when he let his guard down, fewer and farther between these days.

“Thank you, Masha,” he said.

Mary sighed tiredly and started rolling up the bandages. “You can thank me by not disappearing on another suicide mission without—”

Andrei looked mildly offended. “I’m here now, aren’t I?” he said.

Mary felt herself tense. There was something warning in the glint of his eyes, the sort that usually preceded escalation. If she snapped back at him, he would only rise to it, or worse, storm out and leave her alone again. The last time he had done that, she hadn’t seen him for a month. He had returned eventually, sulking and bristling with indignity, with purple-black bruises down the side of his face and an ankle that had never healed properly.

Andrei sighed and plastered on a more neutral expression. “How have you been doing?”

Mary shrugged. “Busy.”

“Are you back in school?”

“Not yet.”

“Why?”

Mary shrugged again. It was suddenly very difficult to look him in the eye. “I think Papa wants to stay in the house. He needs me right now.”

“Maybe staying here isn’t what’s best for him.”

“And you’d know that?” she said. “What’s best for him? When you’ve been home, what, three days this month?”

Andrei fell silent.

“There are some really wonderful homes,” he said finally. “Maybe he would be happier there. And it’d be easier on you.”

“I don’t think so,” Mary said.

“The money is there, Masha,” he said gently. “If you want to use it. It’s there to be used.”

Mary forced a smile. “That’s why you can take last-minute trips to Prague.”

Guilt tightened his face. Mary fought the urge to feel a little vindicated. It was easy to forget, with the way he behaved, that he could hurt too. But it was easier to remember how thoughtless and mean he could be sometimes.

Andrei looked away and drummed his fingers along his thigh. Mary could tell from the tight set of his jaw and the distant look that came over his eyes that he was searching for a way to diffuse the tension crackling between them.

He looked down at his phone. “I got a pissed-off voicemail from the Slavic Vampiristic Society the other morning,” he said. “They weren’t happy I stepped outside my jurisdiction.”

Well. As far as conversation-starters went, this was something of a non sequitur. But it was better than arguing. Better than silence.

“I thought all Russian-origin vampires were under Moscow’s administration,” said Mary.

Andrei exhaled, a sharp jaded sound. “The Baltic and Finnic Societies wanted to stage a joint council to approve the kill. There’s been debate as to his exact country of origin. They’re angry that I left Russia to track him without informing them. Now they’re trying to ‘sanction’ me.”

“Oh, Andrei.”

“Well, I’m not going to stop hunting,” he said. “So really, short of rescinding my visa, they can’t do anything to me.”

“Less scary than the vampires, then.”

“No,” he said wryly. “Leeches you can kill. Can’t shove a stake through a bureaucrat to get around the red tape.”

Not that it would’ve stopped Andrei from trying, Mary thought to herself, but she wisely decided not to mention that.

“It’s a car wreck on fire, Masha,” he continued, and worried his nails between his teeth as if for want of a cigarette. “The Brits are trying to leave, the Turks don’t know whether they want in or out, and the Swiss won’t have any part in it at all. And that’s not to mention the _mess_ in Crimea—”

“Drushya,” Mary said gently, with a bite of gentle teasing, “when’s the last time you read a proper human news article?”

The expression vanished from Andrei’s face. “Why?”

Mary shook her head. Pointless to ask. Andrei had never bothered trying to be a normal human. He’d never been given the chance to.

“What does Pierre think of all of this?” she asked.

Andrei made a dismissive sound in the back of his throat. “I’ll let you know when he emerges from hibernation.”

Mary patted his shoulder. “Maybe you should pay him a visit. It’s been too long.”

“I should let him wallow for a while,” Andrei grumbled. He straightened his legs until they cracked at the knee and the heels of his boots rucked up the edge of the carpet, looking for a moment so frighteningly like their father. “Leaving me to deal with the Society nitwits alone.”

“No, don’t say that, you know that’s not—”

Suddenly from the front door there came a loud insistent knocking. Andrei moved to stand, but Mary caught his shoulder before he could.

“I’ll get it,” she said. “You should rest.”

Andrei let out a vague sound in protest but leaned back against the armrest and closed his eyes. Mary shook her head with a tiny smile before making her way to the door.

Six locks. Christ almighty. She didn’t know many things, but she was certain most families did not have six locks on their door.

Natasha and Sonya looked as though they had slept about three hours between them. Sonya wore a ragged flannel shirt washed one too many times and sneakers covered in markered graffiti. There were dark circles under her eyes and knots in her hair. Natasha wasn’t wearing makeup, but there was still some leftover mascara smudged around her eyes, which Mary supposed was left over from whatever she had been doing the night before. Not studying, certainly.

“Hi, Mary,” said Natasha. “We’re sorry to bother you. We were hoping to talk to Andrei. If he’s back, I mean. Would that be okay?”

“He’s not home,” Mary said.

Lying was a sin. But surely the greater sin would be allowing Natasha to disturb Andrei when he needed his rest.

“Can we come inside, just for a minute?” Natasha said, undeterred, with that hopeful sweet insolence that irritated Mary so deeply. “Maybe we could leave a note or something?”

Mary leaned against the doorframe. “It’s really a bad time.”

“It’s important,” said Sonya.

“I’m very sorry, but—”

“Concerning the family business.”

Mary froze in place. She looked again where she hadn’t properly before. There was that familiar metallic smell, stubbornly clinging to Sonya’s hair and clothes, overpowering her own scent. Magic. She had dried blood under her nails, faint pink burns on her fingertips, scabbed-over skin on her knuckles.

“What happened to you?” she breathed.

“Hey, Masha,” called Andrei as he limped to the door in slow drunken steps, tugging along the throw blanket from the sofa, “I’m sorry, I think I got a bit of blood on—”

Natasha’s eyes widened. “Andrei?”

Andrei frowned. “What are you doing here?”

“I could ask you the same thing.”

A beat passed. Andrei blinked.

“I do live here, you know,” he said drily.

“I thought you were in Prague.” Natasha pushed past Mary, into the house, and Sonya slipped in behind her and pushed the door shut. “You told me that you were going to stay another few—holy shit, what _happened_ to you?”

“Natalya,” Mary began.

“It’s nothing,” Andrei said, as if speaking through water. His eyelids drooped and he leaned against the doorframe.

“Are you alright?” said Sonya.

“You look like you got mauled,” said Natasha.

“A primordial vampire,” Andrei said. He waved her down dismissively. “He didn’t get very far. Got him. Right through the heart.”

He was almost slurring his words now. Internally, Mary cringed. The pills should have knocked him out by now. He should have been snoring on the sofa by now.

Natasha and Sonya should’ve had the sense to know when their company was unwanted.

“If you wouldn’t mind,” Mary began again.

“Sonya and I needed to talk to you. We”—Natasha hesitated—“we wanted your help with—are you _drunk_ or something?”

Andrei looked as though she had just slapped him square across the face. Mary prayed to every saint she could name that he was high enough he wouldn’t realize it was because of the tea.

“I am not _drunk,_ Natalya,” he snapped. “I’m _tired_. I got home ten minutes ago ago and I’ve slept three hours in the past few nights, so if you don’t mind—”

“It doesn’t matter,” Sonya broke before Natasha could open her mouth to retort. “We need you to help us track down a leech we saw at Khlemnoi Lev.”

“A leech at Khlemnoi Lev?” he said flatly. “I’ll call the press.”

“Two leeches,” Natasha snipped.

“‘Khlemnoi Lev’?” Mary whispered to Sonya.

“A club downtown,” Sonya whispered back. “Horrible place. Loud music.”

“And you’ve come to me about this why?” asked Andrei. “You staked them, didn’t you?”

Natasha flushed in irritation. “No.”

“I told her to bring a stake,” Sonya muttered.

“So I suppose I should start combing the north end of Moscow, then,” Andrei said, sarcasm blunting his words. “For those two specific leeches. Should only take me a few years.”

“My hero.”

“Honestly, Natasha, what else do you expect me to do? You know where he was last, go deal with it yourself.”

Natasha rolled her eyes and turned to Sonya. “I told you that this was a waste of time.”

“There’s really nothing you can do?” Sonya said.

Andrei huffed. “I have more important things to keep myself occupied.”

“I’m sure,” Natasha said snidely. “Is one of them named Lise?”

“You’re such a child.”

“Says the one who dumped me over text.”

“Tell me you didn’t,” Mary said to Andrei. “You did _not_!”

“I was in another _country_ , Natasha,” he said.

“You know what,” said Natasha. She snatched her handbag off the table. Until now Mary hadn’t even noticed she had put her things on the table. “We don’t even want your help. If you’re going to be such a cold jackass about it.”

“Nat, really—” Sonya began.

“Great,” said Andrei. “Leave.”

“ _Andrei_ ,” Mary snapped.

“I don’t know why I expected anything different. This is like Yekaterinburg all over again.”

“You’re _still_ going on about that?”

Mary and Sonya exchanged long-suffering looks of exasperation as Natasha and Andrei railed back and forth like white noise. For what they lacked in human normalcy, she thought to herself, they more than made up for it in human melodrama.

“I suppose it’s my fault,” Natasha spat. “I should have realized what a jerk you are while we were still together. Stupid me, thinking I could get through to you.”

“And that is _exactly_ the reason we broke up. You’re too immature to understand how adult relationships—”

Andrei cut himself off sharply. Mary realized, a moment later, that he had stepped into the tea-puddle she had left after dropping her mug.

“Mind your step,” said Sonya, about five seconds too late.

Andrei’s eyes flicked between the mug in his hand and the puddle on the floor, and furrowed his brow in confusion. He set his mug aside and shook his head, as though he’d concluded to himself the train ride had rotted a few brain cells too many.

Mary felt guilty. Not guilty enough to let him know she was the one who had spilt the tea. Or spiked his with the pills.

“Like I said,” Andrei continued, and reached down to peel away his tea-sodden sock, “I have more important things to do. I’m hunting a clan of primordials.”

Natasha scoffed. “Vampires are solitary hunters.”

“The ones at Khlemnoi Lev weren’t,” Sonya said quietly.

Natasha closed her mouth.

Andrei sighed irritably. “Here, I’ll show you.”

The three of them followed him, Mary lingering in the rear, as Andrei made his way down the hallway to the library. From floor to ceiling the walls were lined with shelves filled with books from every era and century. Andrei’s desk was in the corner. There was a bulletin board above it, or there had been once, beneath the tacked-up papers and photographs and maps, the sort of thing she might have expected to see in the private office of a serial killer.

The first photograph showed an old oil painting, framed and mounted on a high wall. A young man and woman, dressed for the eighteenth century, stood in the background behind a seated man. Mary thought he somewhat resembled an old movie star, with his strong jawline and arched eyebrows, his dark eyes and hair, the same features he shared so evidently with the two standing behind him.

“What is this supposed to be?” said Natasha.

“It’s a photograph Pierre took in the Hermitage last year,” said Andrei. “Artist unknown.”

“It’s just a painting. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“I’m getting to that,” said Andrei, a little curtly. He tapped another photo, pinned a few inches away from the first. “Look here. 1832.”

Another photograph, not of painted people this time. A woman and two men posed in front of a staircase with stern expressions plastered on their faces. The painter had been uncanny in his portrayal of them. A fourth figure with lighter hair stood in the background, but a bit of debris on the camera lens had smudged out his face.

“And?” Natasha said. “How do you know these are the same people? How do you know they’re vampires?”

“Because there was another photo of the same family discovered in Poland forty years later,” Andrei said grimly. “Virtually unchanged.”

“So either they’re leeches,” Sonya quipped, “or they have the world’s best moisturizing regimen.”

Of the lot of them, only Mary laughed, and regretted it immediately. Andrei produced the third and final picture.

“Have a look at this compared to the others,” he said. “Dated 1875.”

This photograph showed a family in black-and-white, wearing clothes from another century. Mary knew this one well. Three men stood clustered around a seated woman. They were clearly posing for the camera, affecting positions that were too stiff to be passably natural-looking. The eldest-looking man had his hand on the woman’s shoulder, that same stern expression on his thin handsome face.

One of the mens’ face was blurred beyond recognition, as if he had turned his head just as the shutter had closed. Mary had seen him in other photographs and knew that thin, fine-boned face well enough from other photos. The resemblance was startling. Filial, even. Lord knew Andrei had tossed around that idea a million times, and it was almost sound enough to warrant it. The seated woman, he said, was definitive proof that they were related somehow. The high cheekbones, the dark coloring, the full lips were all near-identical to the older man.

The blonde man was where that particular theory lost some pull. Andrei liked to call this one _The Interloper_ , or _The Outsider_. A newer addition to the clan. He had first appeared sometime in the nineteenth century, though Andrei had yet to decide whether he was or was not the same fair-haired man from the second photograph.

Natasha sucked in a deep breath. “I know him,” she said, tapping the photo. “The blonde.”

Sonya’s eyes widened in realization. “The vamp from the club.”

“He was with another leech.”

“The woman?”

“No,” she said. “No, it was another man.”

Andrei clenched his jaw. “You’re sure?”

“I think I’d know,” Sonya said drily as she pried the third photograph from his fingers and held it close to her face. “I was the one who hexed him away from the bartender.”

“Damn it,” Andrei said. “The pack is expanding.”

“You’re sure it can’t be this one?” Natasha said, pointing to the blurred-out man.

“Too tall,” said Sonya. “This one at the club was wearing boots with thick soles and he was still only your height.”

“That one’s dead besides,” Andrei said drily. “I killed him last night.”

“That still leaves four out there,” Natasha said.

“And I’ll track them on my own,” he said. “I don’t need your help.”

“Well, why not? I can hold a stake just as much as you can.”

“It’s a little out of your league,” he said. “You’ve killed what, ten?”

“Thirteen,” Natasha grumbled. “And look what _one_ did to you.”

“This _one_ was five hundred years old!”

“Well, maybe if you weren’t so goddamn stubborn to do it on your own—”

“What, should I hire a little witch friend to hide behind?”

“I beg your pardon,” said Sonya.

“You should work with them, Drushya,” Mary blurted out.

Silence. Natasha looked surprised to see Mary, for the first time in the two years that they had known and disliked each other, taking her side. Andrei seemed even more surprised to see her encouraging him to hunt at all.

“I’m sorry?” said Natasha.

Andrei’s composure wavered. “Masha, listen—”

“I know I can’t stop you,” she said, “so I won’t try. But I don’t want you to go at it alone.”

“I can handle this on my own, Masha,” he said gently.

“Every time you come home I wonder if it’s the last. You’re safer in numbers, all of you. Whether you like it or not.” She took his hand and squeezed it. “Will you just let me have this peace of mind?”

Andrei pressed his lips together. “Fine.”

“Well,” said Natasha, a faint uptick to her voice like the beginning of a question. Or a demand. Little difference, with Natasha. “Are we doing this or not?”

Andrei hesitated. “I need to speak to Pierre first,” he said. Another pause. “He knows them better than I do. He’ll know where they are, better than anyone.”


	4. That Bad Man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An unexpected and unwelcome visitor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We are SO sorry for the delay!! @thewhiskerydragon JUST got back from her semester abroad, which hopefully will let us post more regularly (a 6 hour time difference + classes + a 9 to 5 job is a bad combo for creativity it seems)!
> 
> Also fun fact, this chapter has been in the works for so long that we originally considered calling it 'father's day' before the day passed. 
> 
> As always, we love and appreciate y'all, and any feedback would mean the world to us!

At some point in the past week or so, Anatole had come to the unpleasant and rather jarring realization that Hélène actually intended to follow through on her threat of house arrest. It had been all well and good for the first day or so. She wasn’t any happier about the burn, but she had lavished attention on him in a way he hadn’t experienced since they had Turned Fedya.

His hand drifted up to his burned cheek. He let his fingertips hover there, almost touching but not quite. Hellfire, did it still hurt. Every odd movement of the skin, every smile or twitch burned like holy water. It must have looked truly hideous, if this was how it felt. For the first time since his death, Anatole was grateful that the whole human affair of mirrors was now beyond him, and after all that Fedya had said, he wasn’t brave enough to chance an exploratory Polaroid. Delicately, he traced the scarred tissue. He felt blisters, tender and hot to the touch. Rougher patches where the skin had begun to heal, and surely it would scar over, across his cheek bone and along his jaw, down his neck, and oh, hell, why did it still hurt so _much_ —

“For hell’s sake, stop touching it!” Hélène snapped from the other side of the room.

Anatole startled and quickly dropped his hands to his sides. On second thought, he stuffed them under the sofa cushion for good measure.

Hélène exhaled heavily through her nose in displeasure and turned back to the window, where she held the curtain off to one side with her palm pressed to the glass. Moscow was never dark these days. Outside the sky was muddied with neon business signs and apartment windows and car headlamps slushing down the rain-lashed highway. Their lights cast Hélène’s face in the pallid yellow-white of anemia. She could have done with going outside to get some moonlight on her skin, or a proper bite to eat. A diet of Pierre would be enough to make anyone look sickly. As things stood, Anatole could still taste it, thin and metallic, on his tongue. 

Little wonder Hélène seemed so hangry tonight.

Natalie’s handiwork, or what of it that remained and still had yet to heal, had no doubt improved the situation tremendously. Hélène had tried to insist on a mask. Anatole in turn had insisted that he wasn’t the Phantom of the fucking opera, thank you very much—he cared for Hélène, truly, but he cared for his dignity a great deal more, and there were some lines he had to draw.

Perhaps she was still pissed off about the curtains. It wasn’t often she held a grudge this long, certainly not against him, though he supposed the circumstances may have merited it. Open curtains, curtains that could let in deadly sunlight were certainly not a matter to take lightly, never mind the fact that it had been Pierre who had left them open, but the poor guy was too Influence-addled to properly blame for anything he did.

Or maybe it was his latest escape attempt that had trod on her nerves again. True to his luck, or lack thereof, she had caught him the other night with one leg over the windowsill before he had had a chance to swing himself over.

Hence the house arrest.

Compulsion, capital _c_ , was a tricky thing. He liked to imagined it was rather like drafting up a law contract. As far as magic went, this sort was among the more finicky, though the interpretation certainly left room for creativity. _Don’t you so much a set one foot outside the door_ , she had said. _If I have to be miserable in here, then so do you._  

When you didn’t want Anatole to do something, you had to be very specific about it.

If he wished to put the rest of him out the door, that was all well and good, but his feet would stay on the other side of the threshold no matter how hard he tried to pull against the order. If he thought of _one foot_ more as a measurement and less of anatomy, that didn’t help him any more. Eleven and three-quarters inches, then a wall of invisible glass, or if he pushed against it, a nasty pull, yanking him back towards Hélène.

Given more time, he might have been able to find a better semantic loophole. But there was little point to it as things stood given the current situation, which was this: Hélène pressed against the window tapping her foot in a listless maddening non-rhythm, worrying at her cuticles and uttering vile things under her breath every now and then.

“How are you feeling?” he chanced to ask. 

Hélène barked out a harsh-sounding laugh and snapped, “Hell-awful.”

Anatole gestured to his face. “We’re a matched pair, aren’t we?” he said.

Hélène whirled around, her lips pulled back to expose her fangs. Anatole shrank back instinctively. “It’s not the same,” she snapped.

“Sorry,” he said, holding his hands up in surrender. “You’re right, I know.”

At that precise moment, from a room down the hallway they heard the familiar bang of a gun being discharged, then the rattle of it hitting the wall. Perhaps Fedya, in one of his fits of despairing misery that seemed to grip him more and more often these days, had given up trying to put a bullet in himself and had taken his pistol to the bookshelf instead. 

If he had had the misfortune to be born in the Soviet Union, Anatole mused, he’d be damned grateful for the shot at a new everlasting life. Sometimes he wondered if he was the only one in the house who made any effort to be fucking happy.

“I’m so bored,” Hélène said, and flung herself onto the settee. The bloodstains on her nightgown clashed marvelously with the red velvet upholstery. Anatole noted that she had neglected to brush her hair out of its plait. He had put that plait in a week ago now.

He didn’t want to ruminate on the implications of that.

“And why is that?” he asked, putting his feet up onto the armrest of his own seat.

“There’s nothing to do anymore.”

Only Hélène, he thought. Of all the creatures on Earth, only she would find boredom in the twenty-first century. It didn’t help, he supposed, that she had never so much as watched The Stooges or The Office.

“How about I play you something?” he said. “Tchaikovsky? MCR?”

Hélène clicked her tongue against her teeth. “If I wanted to listen to music, I’d use Fedya’s Walkman.”

Anatole had to fight to suppress the scoff. As if she would ever deign to figure it out on her own. The most advanced piece of technology Hélène could be bothered to work was a light switch, less a question of ability and more of willingness.

“Would you like to hear a story instead?” he said.

“You’ve told me all of them already.”

“That can’t possibly be true,” he said. “How about the one with the constable and the bear?”

Hélène gave a vague dismissive wave of her hand. “Yes.”

“The priest and the contortionist?”

“Yes.”

“What about the time Fedya and I found a werewolf in—”

“Heard it all before.”

Anatole frowned to himself. “Well. I’m all out of stories, then.”

Hélène shot him a withering glare. “You’ve been alive for two hundred years.”

“I suppose that’s how long it takes.”

“Only two hundred years to turn you into a dullard,” she sneered.

“And it took you, what, seventy?”

Hélène’s eyes burned crimson. Her sneer widened; her fangs threatened to make a reappearance.

“Sorry, sorry,” he said hastily. “I’m just bored.”

“So amuse yourself.”

“You really should reconsider investing in an Internet connection. I could show you Reddit. Or Netflix. Or TV Tropes.”

“We’ve been over this,” she said with great impatience, as though speaking to a slow or stupid child. “The Internet is just a fad. It’ll go out of fashion in twenty years.”

Anatole slunk down a little lower and pouted. Time to settle in for another night spent at her side bored out of his damn mind.

She hadn’t always been this miserable or difficult-to-please. She had been happy once, before the move to Moscow. Vasily had kept Hélène high out of her mind for almost four hundred years. She’d been pining for that high for less than seventy. The habit, evidently, was a hard one to kick. The happy thoughtless stupor of Influence was more potent than any drug Anatole had ever tried, human or fae. It only followed that the withdrawal would hurt like a bitch.

Anatole was startled out of his reverie by a thunderous knock at the door that seemed to shake the building down to its foundation. Hélène groaned and rubbed her temples.

“Did Fedya order delivery again?”

“How?” Anatole grumbled. “He doesn’t know how to work a phone.”

Hélène frowned. “They’re not that difficult, are they?” she said, and gestured in circles like dialing up a rotary.

There came another, more insistent knock. A cloud of dust shook itself loose from the ceiling. Anatole coughed and fanned his hand in front of his nose.

“Well, Fedya’s not here,” she said. “Get the door. I’m hungry.”

“If you’d let me leave, I’d find someone better,” he said. “You hate deliverymen. They’re always too greasy.”

“I don’t care.”

“Why don’t we finish the thrall?”

“Because I said so.”

“You know,” he said, “I think if you left the apartment and got some fresh air every once in a blue moon, you’d be a lot less miser—”

“That’s not the problem,” she snarled.

“All I’m saying is that it couldn’t hurt.”

“It couldn’t hurt if I ripped out your tongue,” she said in a low foul voice.

Anatole sighed and tipped his head back against the armrest. “Honestly, Lena, I don’t know what else you could—”

“Elena!” boomed a horrifyingly familiar voice. “Invite me in!”

Hellfire.

Anatole and Hélène shot to their feet at once, stiff with fear. The air of the room grew cold and heavy.

“Elena?” he called again. “I know you’re in there!” 

Hélène’s eyes darted towards the window. 

“Don’t you dare,” Anatole hissed. “You can’t just leave me alone with him!”

“How did he find us?”

“Does it fucking matter?”

Her eyes flicked back towards the front of the room. “You don’t think he’d break down the door?” 

Anatole considered this for a moment. To enter into another vampire’s dwelling without permission was appallingly rude. Not impossible, but frowned upon.

And certainly not at all beyond him.

“Anatole,” Hélène said, her voice tense and hard, “don’t do anything stupid. I’ll handle this.”

Anatole nodded wordlessly and slunk back down to the chair.

Hélène cleared her throat, straightened her nightgown to hide the bloodstains and creases, and hurriedly ran her fingers through her plait to untangle it. “Come in, Papa.”

From behind the wall they heard the sound of the lock rattling, cylinders and bolts and latches sliding apart. The door swung open and a man stepped in.

Tall, broadly-built, hair edged with silver and a thin goatee, Vasily Kuragin hadn’t changed a bit in the seventy-odd years since Anatole had last seen him. His handsome Slavic features were vaguely reminiscent of Hélène’s, from the proud Roman nose to the wide cheekbones. There was something similar in their mannerisms too, no matter how much Hélène tried to deny it. That slow smile especially, was chillingly familiar.

The eyes were what broke the illusion. Hélène’s were wine-red; Vasily’s black as coal. If he had ever once been in possession of a soul, not a trace of it could be seen there. Anatole fought down an involuntary shiver as they passed over him.

Vasily wiped his feet on the doormat and draped his coat over the back of the settee. “Elena,” he said to Hélène, setting aside his sodden umbrella on the rack. “Let me have a look at you, my darling.”

Hélène remained stiff and rigid in his arms as he pulled her close and kissed her cheek. “Papa,” she said, sounding smothered.

“Oh, my little girl. It’s good to see you again. You’ve been away from home too long.”

“I would thank you kindly,” she said in a clipped voice, “to not drip water on my floor.”

Vasily tutted and held her out at arm’s length. “So formal, Elena. A man expects a warm greeting from his daughter.”

Hélène’s face hardened. She wriggled out from his grasp. “I don’t know why you would.”

“You’re still dressed in your daythings at this hour?”

“I’m sure you can imagine I wasn’t expecting company.”

Vasily narrowed his eyes and reached for her skirt. “Is that blood?”

Hélène pressed her lips together and slapped his hands away. Her eyes glinted crimson. “It’s not any of your business if it is.”

Anatole felt his gut leap into his throat. That wasn’t good. That wasn’t good at all. If it came to a fight—well, after the last time, he didn’t want to imagine what might happen if it came to a fight. He looked around the room for a saving grace, anything to disrupt the argument brewing. There was the bookshelf, the disemboweled loveseat, the stained rug, the coal stove with its innards spilled out, and the blue vase, teetering dangerously close to the edge of the side table. 

Ah. That would do nicely.

Anatole closed his eyes and swung his arm into the vase, sending it crashing to the floor. Vasily and Hélène whipped around in unison.

“How terribly clumsy of me,” he said. “I think someone walked over my grave.”

“That was _Ming_ ,” Hélène hissed.

Vasily’s face darkened at once. “Anatoly.”

Anatole restrained himself, with great effort, from rolling his eyes. It was to be expected, he told himself. He had never been the favorite child, even when he was alive.

Never mind that he had never gone by _Anatoly_. Stupid old man, Anatole thought. A proud relic of the Middle Ages. With the way the grouchy windbag carried on sometimes, he could just as easily have predated the wheel.

“Nice to see you again,” Anatole said levelly, with as much civility as he could be bothered to dredge up. “You don’t look a day over five hundred.”

Vasily looked as though he couldn’t decide whether or not he had just been insulted. Anatole bit down a laugh. The last time he had laughed at Vasily, the old bat had locked him outside minutes before daybreak. Anatole had had to take refuge in an abandoned stable and wait for nightfall to grovel for forgiveness.

“Young man,” said Vasily, sounding strangely rattled, “you have something on your face.”

Pride smarting, Anatole raised his hand to cover his cheek. “It’s nothing,” he muttered into his sleeve.

“Speak clearly.”

“Papa,” Hélène said warningly.

“It’s nothing,” Anatole repeated. “I’m fine. I ran into a Hunter the other night. It doesn’t matter.”

Vasily’s eyes widened just a fraction. For a moment, Anatole thought he looked afraid. As afraid as he could be. But if Vasily had ever in his life felt an inclination towards emotion of any sort, he must have left it in the Middle Ages. Sure enough, his face became neutral again within a second.

“How have you been faring out on your own?” he asked Hélène.

“Well enough, I suppose,” she said.

Vasily surveyed the room with a critical gaze. His eyes lingered on a spot on the ceiling that had caved in and the mold-sodden wallpaper peeling away. He shook his head. _What a pigsty_ , said the shaking of the head. Anatole felt this was something of an unfair judgement. The smell of formaldehyde, he supposed, was less than pleasant. But the furniture was mostly intact and the blackout curtains, to the best of his memory, had last been washed only ten or so years ago. As far as abandoned Moscow apartments went, you’d be hard-pressed to find a nicer one. 

“Where’s your little pet?” Vasily asked.

Hélène’s smile, strained as it was, fell from her face, along with whatever pretense of politeness she had been carrying with it. “Out.”

The laugh was harder to bite down this time. Perhaps Fedya was hiding now. Smart choice. For all his bluster, he was a coward where Vasily was involved, or wherever his little pistol would only do him more harm than good.

Vasily invited himself a little further into the room and sank onto the settee across from Anatole’s seat. Anatole felt this was something tantamount to invasion. “You ought to stake him.”

“Papa,” Hélène said in warning.

“It was a silly dalliance. You’ve said so yourself.”

“May I please be excused?” Anatole whispered.

“No,” they said together.

Anatole shrank back down and pulled his feet up onto the cushion.

“Quite oddly enough,” Hélène snapped, turning back to Vasily. “I don’t recall asking for your opinion.”

“Honestly, Elena, I don’t know what I’ve done to merit that kind of tone.”

“Then you’re a bigger fool than I took you for.”

Anatole could have leapt out of his skin with fear. Host rules or not, Hélène was pushing her luck, and she had to know that.

Or maybe she didn’t. He wasn’t sure which was worse.

Vasily sighed and massaged his temples, as if suffering some great inconvenience, then ran a hand through his hair to smooth it down. “I’d hoped you and I could have a civil conversation at the very least. It seems Moscow has made you forget your manners.”

Hélène leaned back against the settee and folded her arms across her chest. “Run to Annette, then. I’m sure she’d be much happier to see you than I am.”

“I wish this were only a social call.”

 _Indeed, you dusty old leech_ , thought Anatole. _There are many things we wish this wasn’t_.

Hélène remained unimpressed as ever. “What is it then?”

“Your brother Ippolit is dead.”

There followed silence for a few moments.

“Oh,” Hélène said vaguely, a beat later. “How terribly upsetting.”

Anatole imagined this was not the sort of reaction Vasily had intended. But Ippolit had never been their brother, not really. Not the way Vasily had wanted. 

However long it had been since he had last had a scrap of humanity in him, it had thoroughly been burnt out. He didn’t understand family, hadn’t bothered to understand anything about Anatole or Hélène in the years they had lived with him. Nothing had changed.

“I imagine this might be somewhat upsetting to take in,” Vasily said cautiously.

“No, not really,” said Hélène. 

Silence again. It became apparent that Vasily was waiting for something more.

Hélène sighed and asked, with evident annoyance, “Well, what happened to him?”

“A Hunter. Bolkonsky.”

“Nikolai Bolkonsky is—”

“Not Nikolai,” Vasily cut in. “The son, Andrei. He’s taken over from his father.” 

Hélène’s eyes widened. “Andrei?”

Anatole rolled that name around in his mind. Vaguely familiar from somewhere. Though after having been alive for as long as he had been, he supposed, just about every name was familiar from somewhere.

Vasily nodded. “He followed Ippolit and I to Prague. We thought we had lost him in Warsaw, but he found us everywhere we went. I expect he’ll be in Moscow soon enough, if he’s not here already.”

“So you’re on the run,” Hélène said. “That’s why you’ve come here. You didn’t have anywhere else to go.”

In all the years, far too many years, that Anatole had known Vasily, and probably all the years Vasily had lived before Anatole had been born, he had never admitted to being wrong. His hesitation spoke loud enough, as it was.

“For now, yes,” Vasily said finally.

Hélène’s eyes flashed crimson. “You could have brought a Bolkonsky under my roof!”

“That’s why I’m here. I’ll have to leave the city soon. It’s not safe for anyone with the Bolkonskys lurking about.” 

“So you came to say goodbye?”

“No. I’d like you to come with me.”

Hélène blinked. Her eyes grew dark again. “I beg your pardon.”

Vasily reached over, across the coffee table, and took Hélène’s hand. “The city isn’t safe anymore, pet. I don’t like the thought of you being on your own with Hunters roaming around.” He shifted his withering gaze to Anatole, who shrank back until there wasn’t a great deal of shrinking left to do. “Look what’s already happened to your brother.”

Hélène bit her lip. If Anatole’s face burned any hotter, it might just as well have melted off.

“I couldn’t live with myself if you were hurt, Elena,” Vasily continued. He squeezed Hélène’s hand and brushed a thumb over her knuckles. “Not when I could help you.”

She hesitated and he pressed on. 

“This country hasn’t been the same since the Revolution. They’ve forgotten what it means to _live_. We’ll travel. I know how fond you are of Paris. Soon you’ll have forgotten all about Russia.”

“It can’t be like last time,” Hélène said finally.

“It won’t, dearest, I promise.”

“And I can leave whenever I like?”

Vasily hesitated. “All I want is to keep you safe.”

Hélène turned to Anatole with a contemplative look about her. “You like Paris, don’t you, Toto? Even after they put that horrible glass pyramid in the Louvre.”

“I don’t mind Paris, myself,” he said. 

“Ah,” Vasily said delicately. “I was thinking just the two of us, darling.” 

Hélène’s eyes flashed red again. Anatole saw the gleam of her fangs under the curl of her lip. “This wasn’t what we agreed to. You said that I could have him.”

“You’re forgetting, Elena,” Vasily said testily. “He belongs to me, not you.”

“I’m sorry?” said Anatole.

“He hasn’t ever belonged to you,” Hélène growled. “You would’ve thrown him to the gutter if it weren’t for me. I _made_ him.”

Anatole flinched and shrank back as far as the sofa would allow, wishing instead it was considered less undignified to dive under the table for cover.

“Anatole,” Vasily said sternly, a note of Compulsion undercutting his voice, “stand up.”

Anatole felt an awful familiar sensation seize him, iron freezing what little blood still ran in his veins. His limbs weren’t his own. His legs pushed him from where he was standing, upright, and held him there against his will. His mind flailed in its grip, but the rest of him rather rudely refused to cooperate.

“Now listen,” he said, hysteria edging into his voice, “let’s talk about this, really, we’re not animals here.”

Hélène looked at a loss. She hardly had the right to look so upset, Anatole thought. _She_ wasn’t the one Vasily saw fit to puppet around like a fucking marionette.

“Anatole, sit down,” she said.

And with those words, Anatole had the answer to a question he had never wanted answered. He heard Hélène’s words bouncing around in his skull, urging him back, felt two immense forces pulling upon him in opposite directions, threatening to tear him in half. But the pull of Vasily’s words was too strong.

“Anatole,” Hélène repeated, pushing harder, forcing more Compulsion into her voice. “Do as I say.”

Another awful tugging sensation came over him, as though his muscles were forcefully trying to separate themselves from his bones. He strained against it, trembling violently, gasping, even though air brought with it no relief. And still, nothing.

“He listens to me and not you,” Vasily said coldly, “because he is mine. As are you.”

“I’m not yours,” she snarled. “I’ve never been yours.”

“You need me. Look how you’ve wasted away here without me.”

Hélène stiffened in fury. Anatole winced. It was true enough, though he’d much rather saw off his own leg than face the consequences of admitting it.

“Because of you,” she snarled, and leaned forwards with a look in her eyes like some feral animal backed into a corner. “You made me sick. You _ruined_ me.”

“You chose this, Elena,” said Vasily. “You didn’t want to live by my rules. This is the consequence of your decision.” He looked aside to Anatole with disdain and said, in a voice that might have been more appropriate addressing the family dog, “Sit.”

Anatole collapsed forcefully, as though the invisible puppet strings holding him upright had been snipped, back to the sofa. The impact was distinctly more a push than a drop. He tried to sit upright again, but Compulsion, both Hélène’s and Vasily’s, held him down with not an inch of wriggle room in between.

If it wouldn’t have pissed off Vasily even more, he might have howled in frustration.

“Don’t touch my things,” said Hélène.

Something in Vasily’s face hardened. “I don’t like this new attitude of yours.”

“You have some nerve,” Hélène said, “to criticize. You came to _me,_ remember.”

“Is it really so much to ask that we might have a civilized conversation after all this time?”

Anatole heard his voice glittering and roiling with a familiar silvery lilt, dark and musical, like a sinkhole in a river calling the water upstream. Unease crept down his spine.

Hélène frowned uncertainly. Her features began to go slack.

“You’ve been terribly rude to me ever since I sat down. One would almost think you didn’t want to see me.”

Hélène shook her head seemingly without realizing it. “No, Papa, I didn’t mean to.”

Vasily reached for her hands again. “I’ve been sick with worry over you these past few years, you know.”

The furrows of her brow deepened. “I’m alright.”

“You’re my daughter, Elena,” he said gently. “I’ll always want to protect you.”

“Lena,” Anatole began tentatively.

“Wouldn’t it be easier to let me take care of you?” Vasily continued, ignoring him.

Hélène shook her head, as if trying to dislodge his voice. Her eyes widened in recognition. “No,” she hissed. “Don’t you dare—I hate you, I’ll kill you, I _swear_ —!”

“Really,” he said calmly, lacing his voice with more Influence, “that’s no way to speak to your father. I’d hoped you would’ve remembered your manners.”

Hélène’s eyes went unfocused. A slow sleepy smile spread across her face.

“There now,” Vasily said. “Isn’t that so much better?”

“So much better,” she repeated.

Anatole felt his unbeating heart sink to the pit of his stomach. 

“I know that you’re unhappy here, dearest,” said Vasily.

She nodded slowly.

“You’re not yourself. You’ve not been yourself for a long time.”

“I’m not myself,” she said. Some of the fog cleared from her eyes and she frowned. “Because of you. You took it away.”

“No, darling,” he said gently. “You chose to leave. You’ve done this to yourself.”

“My fault,” she said echoed.

“Good girl. You’re much happier when you’re with me, aren’t you?”

Hélène nodded. “So much happier, Papa.”

Vasily smiled. “Things will be just the way they used to, my dear. Just the two of us. Anatoly won’t ever bother us again.”

“Papa?” Anatole squeaked.

Vasily leaned back in his seat and folded his legs at the ankles, looking for all the world as though he were settling down at his desk to smoke a cigar. “I’ve never liked you,” he said. “I’m sure that’s no secret to you. The only reason I allowed you to live was because it made Elena happy.”

“It did,” Anatole said, sounding a little choked. “I don’t imagine she’d be happy if you were to leave me behind.”

“Nonsense,” Vasily said calmly. “By the time I’m through with her, she won’t even remember you existed.”

Anatole felt a rush of cold fear wash over him. “Lena,” he said, a little hysterically, “Lena, please, you don’t want this. Lena, he’s going to _hurt_ —”

“Enough of that,” Vasily said. “Close your mouth and don’t move.”

Anatole didn’t so much close his mouth as it closed of its own accord. The muscles of his jaw strained, drawing taut enough to snap. His teeth ground themselves together until it hurt.

Vasily picked a stray thread off the hem of his sleeve. “I considered letting you live, once, you know. But you’ve proven to be too much of a distraction for her.”

Anatole made a sound of pure panic and pulled against the Compulsion fruitlessly.

Hélène frowned at the noise, temporarily pulled from her stupor, and turned towards him. “Tolya?”

Unable to do anything else, he let out a tiny, pathetic cry. He felt tears, hot and humiliating, burning a path down his cheeks, painful as holy water.

Dazed, Hélène wiped away his tear with her thumb, then cupped his face in her hands. “You’re sad,” she murmured. “Darling, why are you crying?” 

“Elena,” Vasily said sharply.

Hélène turned her head with a confused pout. “Tolya’s upset.”

“Everything’s alright, dear. He doesn’t matter.” 

Her brows drew together confusedly. “He doesn’t…matter?”

“Not at all, darling. You’ll meet a nicer boy in Paris.”

“Paris,” Hélène sighed dreamily.

Anatole forced out an indignant, wordless yell.

“For hell’s sake, I told you to be _silent_ ,” Vasily hissed.

Another horrid sensation. Anatole’s throat seemed to close on itself, the sound lodged halfway out, his vocal cords frozen and useless.

“You’ve always been such a nuisance,” Vasily said, shifting forwards in his seat. “I should have rid myself of you long ago.”

This, Anatole supposed, with a morbid sort of resignation, was nothing more than he expected. Vasily had made it quite apparent by now that he would much rather have left Anatole to the daylight than ever have suffered a minute in his company.  The feeling was entirely mutual. 

“There’s not a day gone by I haven’t regretted my decision. It would’ve been less of a headache if I had left you to bleed out in that alley.” He looked briefly to Hélène, who was presently staring off into space without a care in the world. “I think I’ll make her kill you herself,” he said, with all the casual air of someone ordering a coffee. “Properly, I mean. Slowly. Intimately. In every way she knows you fear. Yes, I think that would be quite fitting.”

Anatole would have flinched if his limbs had been able to move.

“Elena, darling?” said Vasily.

“Yes, Papa?”

“I think Anatoly has become a nuisance. Don’t you agree?”

Hélène’s face was terrifyingly blank. “Tolya’s become a nuisance.”

“You’ve never liked living with him.”

“I’ve never liked living with him,” she said. “Have you seen the way he dresses? He’s always late coming home. He plays the worst music even if I ask him to turn the volume down. And he’s not even pretty anymore.”

Vasily clucked. “You don’t have any use for him, my dear.”

“I have no use for him.”

“Tear out his throat.”

Hélène’s fangs slid out, glistening and ivory. Anatole whimpered as her hands crept around his neck, tight enough to constrict airflow, if he could breathe. He felt her nails prick the underside of his jaw, almost sharp enough to draw blood. He looked into her eyes, searching desperately for any flicker of warmth, but they were cold and blank and red as wine.

It occurred to him that this alone was unlikely to kill him. Somehow, that thought did not help.

She dug her fingers in deeper, cutting into his flesh and his every instinct was screaming at him to _run_ but he couldn’t and Hélène was drawing closer—

“Anatole, you jackass,” shouted Fedya as he stormed into the room, waving around a cigarette box above his head. “You took my fucking lighter again, didn’t you, you stupid—?”

Vasily’s eyes locked with Fedya’s. Fedya froze. The cigarette box fell from his grip. Anatole inwardly thanked—well, whatever or whoever might be listening—for the interruption.

Vasily’s lip curled into a snarl. Fedya turned on his heel, pale faced, and scurried out the door without another word. But the distraction had been just jarring enough. The hand holding his throat loosened. Hélène’s eyes cleared of their Influence-fog. Rage and recognition filled them. 

“How dare you,” she snarled. “You _promised_. You said you wouldn’t.”

“Elena, darling—”

Hélène shot to her feet, bristling with fury. “You should’ve stayed in your coffin and let the earth rot you,” she spat. “Get out of my apartment!”

“Elena,” Vasily began. 

“I said get _out_!”

He made no move to leave. Incensed, Hélène took the coffee table from its underside and upended it. Vasily fled to the other side of the room. Certainly not out of fear of injury—the unnamable deity only knew what sort of worldly force could bring about harm to a vampire of his age—but out of concern for his precious tailored suit, which was no doubt considerably less durable than him.

“I’m staying at the Bulgakov Museum,” he said levelly, straightening his back, and brushed a few errant splinters off his sleeves. “Number ten Bolshaya Sadovaya Ulitsa. Apartment fifty. If you change your mind.”

That did it, Anatole supposed. The supposition of an _if_. And sure enough, Hélène gave an enraged howl and lunged after him. Vasily was gone in an instant. He slammed the door shut behind him with such force that a ratty oil painting unscrewed itself from the wall and clattered to the ground.

There came a great lifting sensation, as though some great dark cloud had blown itself out the front door and left the apartment empty of its presence. Anatole felt its hold on him loosen and then disappear, as if it had never been there at all. He let himself go slack against the backrest, spent and trembling, his head pounding. His relaxation was short-lived. Feral and incensed, Hélène tore about the room and overturned another table, then a sideboard, then the sofa itself.

Anatole flinched and remained still and silent as she raged on. The wallpaper was torn down in great clawed shreds. An ottoman sailed into the bookcase. Overhead, the chandelier rattled in warning, as if threatening to come unscrewed.

He wondered idly if this just might do the ceiling in. Soviet architecture was likely not built for this sort of abuse.

“Lena,” he said delicately, “perhaps you could slow down? I really don’t think —”

Hélène whipped around to glare at him. The front of her was dusted white with powdered drywall and splinters. Anatole flinched back. She probably wouldn’t kill him. He strongly doubted it, as a matter of fact. But you couldn’t be too sure of anything these days.

“Leave me the hell alone,” she snarled. “I’m going to go lie down.”

Without so much as running a hand through her hair to brush out the sawdust, she took off down the hallway. Anatole heard the door to her bedroom slam shut louder than a door really ought to have been slammed. A handful of chandelier crystals rattled loose and added themselves to the wreckage. The room looked worse now, somehow, than when they had first found it.

Anatole sighed to himself and surveyed the disaster before him. He didn’t suppose the Swiffer would do them much good here. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of the charcoal grey peacoat still draped over the settee. Armani. Expensive.

Vasily’s.

Anatole’s eyelid twitched. Nothing Vasily did ever lacked intention. And what was a coat but a prelude to moving in? Next thing they knew, he’d be wheeling in his dresser and ripping out the old wallpaper and replacing all the appliances, and maybe he might bother to bring a helldamn Wi-Fi router with him, but Anatole very much doubted he’d be allowed to live long enough to use it.

Well. Better not delve too deep into that line of thought. 

Anatole’s legs still trembled as he pushed himself upright and dusted off the front of his shirt. He didn’t want to wait for Vasily to come back. He didn’t want to stick around for Hélène to bite his head off. He didn’t want to stay in this apartment for another second.

He knew what he needed, and it sure as hell wasn’t sobriety.

Anatole made sure to keep his footsteps light as he crept down the corridor and slipped in through the door to Fedya’s room.

Fedya was kneeling in front of his bed, clutching a chain around his neck. He didn’t so much as look up as Anatole cracked the door open a little wider and leaned against the frame.

Prayer for a vampire. For hell’s sake.

Fedya could not wear a cross, nor call upon the unnamable deity. Anatole seriously doubted whether the big guy upstairs would bring himself to care for the prayers of a soulless leech like him. And only a man as stupid and stubborn as Fedya would still feel the need to answer to a higher power. And yet there he was, bowed over an icon and a cross bent into not-cross-ness like some gullible human.

“Evening, comrade,” he said.

Fedya shot to his feet at once with the look of a guilty man and shoved the pendant back under his collar. “Would it kill you to fucking knock first?” he snarled.

Of all the things to remain attached to, this was likely one of the oddest possible options. For a Soviet, at that. Well, Anatole reasoned, if Fedya wanted a hit of fae opium, he would oblige.

“I thought good Christians weren’t supposed to swear,” he said, raising an eyebrow.

“Fuck you.”

“Ask nicely.”

Fedya’s eyes gleamed a poisonous green and he bared his fangs.

“Ah, ah, ah,” Anatole said, wagging a finger. “Manners, Fyedka. Didn’t you pay any attention in church as a boy?”

Fedya looked as though he would have loved nothing more than to lunge across the doorway and shake Anatole until his skull rattled. Anatole laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. Between him and Vasily it was impossible to tell who he took more delight in riling up, but at the very least, Fedya offered fewer repercussions. It was easy to laugh at something you couldn’t fear. 

“Get the hell out of my room,” Fedya snarled.

Anatole made no move to leave. Fedya made no move to force him. He knew better by now. Seventy years of trying could, in fact, teach an old dog new tricks.

Fedya exhaled sharply through his nose in displeasure and fixed Anatole with a cold glare. “What do you want?”

“The old man’s gone now.” 

“What was the occasion?”

“Family business and all that bullshit. Anyhow,” Anatole said, reaching for Fedya’s cologne, “I suggest that we hightail the fuck out of here before he decides to make a return trip.”

Fedya’s hand hovered uncertainly over the pistol at his belt. Load of good that would do him, Anatole thought, and almost laughed. “You don’t think he might?”

“If you want to find out for yourself, comrade, be my guest.” He snatched the apartment keys off the sideboard and lobbed them in Fedya’s general direction. “If tonight’s our last night before he’s back, I intend to make the most of it.” 

Fedya caught the keys and looked askance at them. “What about Lena?”

“Lena can handle herself. Besides, we won’t be out long. Now come on. I want witch magic. We won’t be able to find fae drugs this late.”

Fedya’s brows drew together. “But we can’t. She told us we couldn’t.”

Anatole clapped Fedya on the shoulder, a little harder than necessary. “The longer you’re around, Fyedka, the more you’ll realize how easy it is to reinterpret what Lena wants us to do.”

“What?”

“I’ve been ordered to leave her the hell alone. What do you say we give her some space and have a night out on the town?”

Fedya went quiet. “Can we do that?”

“Only one way to tell.”

Anatole dragged Fedya through the apartment, to the front door, still rattling on its hinges, pushed it open, and tentatively stuck his foot out. No glass wall. No Compulsion forced him back behind the threshold. The first good sign of the night.

“What did I say?” he said, rolling up his sleeves, and bumped Fedya’s shoulder with his own. “Now, let’s go out while we’re still young, eh?”

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback fuels us!


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